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.COJEVRIGHT DEPOSIT, 



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A YEAR OF SUNSHINE. 



My frje ^<arr)e @/iuir)©p. 



PURPLE AND GOLD. 

Choice Poems about Purple Aster and Golden Rod. On leaves bound 
with purple ribbon. Kate Sanborn compiled it: Rosina Emmet 
illustrated it. Sumptuous illuminated covers. $1.25. 
" The loveliest of Christmas cards." — " An exquisite brochure" — 

" True sestheticism." 

" We can conceive of nothing prettier for a present." — Gazette. 
"The very ideal of true sestheticism." — Home Journal. 

GRANDMA'S GARDEN. 

A group of leaflets similar in style to " Purple and Gold." It con- 
tains 38 pages of reading matter, including new poems by Lucy 
Larcom, Rose Terry Cooke, and others, and is " tied up in flexible 
covers with a cord and tassel of gold color, and with a dear old Kate 
Greenaway style of old lady walking among beds of flowers." $1.25. 
" Dainty." — Congregationalist. 
"Very beautiful." — Chicago Journal. 
" A choice little gem." — Indianapolis Herald. 

LITERATURE LESSONS. 

ROUND-TABLE SERIES. — TWENTY-FIVE NUMBERS. 

These novel and labor-saving Literature Lessons are called the 
"Round-Table Series:" twenty-five papers, from Chaucer to Ten- 
nyson, with suggestions for study, subjects for essays, special read- 
ings for each period, brought down to latest date. Each author is 
treated by topics, with his contemporaries in his own country, and 
afterward, all over the world, grouped in circles about the central 
figure. 



The Celts. 


Pope. 


Thomson. 


Tennyson. 


Chaucer. 


Addison. 


Gray. 


Hallam. 


Spenser. 


Defoe. 


Scott. 


Macaulay. 


Shakespeare. 


Hume. 


Byron. 


Dickens. 


John Donne. 


Johnson. 


Burns. 


Lord Jeffrey. 


Milton. 


Chatterton 


Wordsworth. 


Ben Jon3on. 


Dryden. 








Printed separately on sheets, 


and enclosed in neat 


envelope. Price 


for each author, 


25 cents. 







*** Sent, postpaid, by the publishers, to any address in the 
United States or Canada, on receipt of the price. 

JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., Publishers, Boston. 






YEAR OF SUNSHINE 



ferjeepul rSxfpeccfs 



FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR 

©elected errjd eyy.PF(zrr)qea 

By KATE SANBORN 




JPJJZ-Q 



l<D©sI©r) 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 

1884 






Copyright, 1882 and 188 
By KATE SANBORN. 



/z-3teyy 



JFranWfn $rtss: 

RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY, 
BOSTON. 



PREFACE. 



The sun does not always shine ; and once in a while 
there is no "bright side," unless we imitate the old woman, 
who, having heard that her husband's neck was broken, 
thanked God that it was no worse. At such times we 
must make our own sunshine, or take it ready made. 
This calendar, with nearly five hundred selections on mak- 
ing the best of things, has found its way to many hearts 
as a help, a spur, an inspiration. One is ashamed to be 
blue, and sees the utter uselessness of gloomy retrospect 
or forebodings, with such cheery sentences staring him in 
the face. 

So many requests have been received to have it put in 
a more permanent form, that a revised edition is offered, 
with space for amateur decoration, or memoranda, birth- 
days, or what you please, with poems for special days at 
the close. Modern authors indulge altogether too much 
in the morbid and unintelligible. Healthful men and 
women, with a keen enjoyment of life, sigh (in print) for 
the death-angel, and crave a quiet grave. But pessimism 
is contemptible and cowardly in print or in life. Let us 
make each year for ourselves and all around us, " A Year 

of Sunshine." 

KATE SANBORN. 



January 1. 



Another year is dawning ! 
Dear Master, let it be, 
In working or in waiting, 
Another year with thee. 

Another year of progress, 
Another year of praise ; 
Another year of proving 
Thy presence "all the days/* 

Another year is dawning ! 
Dear Master, let it be, 
On earth, or else in heaven, 
Another year for thee. 

Frances R. Havergal. 



January 2. 



In ancient mythology, Janus was the god of gates and 
avenues, and held a key in his right hand, a rod in his 
left, to symbolize his opening and ruling the year. 



SELF-ESTEEM. 



Some Frenchmen, who had landed on the coast of 
Guinea, found a negro prince seated under a tree, on a 
block of wood for his throne, and three or four negroes, 
armed with wooden pikes, for his guards. His sable 
majesty anxiously inquired, " Do they talk much of me 
in France ? " 



If you want your business done, go / if not, send ! 



January 3. 



God send our maister a happy New- Year ! 
A happy New- Year as e'er he did see ! 

Old English Ballad 



Yes, yes, it's very true and very clear, 
By way of compliment and common chat, 
It's very well to wish me a New- Year; 
But wish me a new hat ! 

Although not spent in luxury and ease, 

In course a longer life I won't refuse ; 

But, while you're wishing, wish me, please, 

A newer pair of shoes ! 

Thomas Hood, 



Defeat may be victory in disguise : 
The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide. 

Longfellow, 



January 4. 



The Spaniard of whom Southey tells that he always 
put on his magnifying-glasses when he ate cherries, in 
order to make them seem larger, had the true philosophy 
of life. It is surprising how narrow means and simple 
pleasures may be eked out by a little invention. 

Sydney Smith, that great master of human happiness, 
used to cry out, " Glorify the room ! " and the windows, 
being thrown open, let in a blaze of sunshine and flowers. 
It is well to glorify our lives in this way a little, by throw- 
ing open the windows, and taking an enlarged view of 
all our blessings. 



Oh, what were life, if life were all ? 

Thine eyes are blinded by their tears, or thou wouldst see. 

Thy treasures wait thee in the far-off skies ; 

And Death, thy friend, will give them all to thee. 

Adelaide A. Procter, 



January 5. 



In a small place a woman can't buy a calico apron 
without the neighbors holdm' a inquest over it. Some 
think she ort to have it, some think it is extravagant in 
her, and some think the set flowers on it is too young 
for her; and then they will all quarrel agin whether she 
ort to make it with a bib, or not. 

The very reason why men's talk, as a general thing, is 

nobler than wimmen's, is because they have nobler things 

to talk about. 

Samantha Allen, 



Haply no more, music and mirth and love, 
And glorious things of old and younger art, 
Shall of thy days make one perpetual feast. 
But, when these bright companions all depart, 
Lay then thy heart upon the ample breast 
Of Hope, — and thou shalt hear the angels sing above. 

Frances Anne Kemble, 



January 6. 



O New- Year, teach us faith ! 

The road of life is hard : 
When our feet bleed, and scourging winds us scath, 

Point thou to Him whose visage was more marred 
Than any man's, who saith, 

"Make straight paths for your feet," and, to the opprest, 
"Come to me, and I will give you rest." 

Yet hang some lamp-like hope 

Above this unknown way, 
Kind year, to give our spirits freer scope, 

And our hands strength to work while it is day. 

But if that way must slope 

Tombward, oh bring before our fading eyes 

The lamp of life, the hope that never dies ! 

Mrs* Craik. 



Walk as children of light, for the fruit of the light is in 
all goodness and righteousness and truth. 



January 7. 



We are bound, by every rule of justice and equity, to 
give the New- Year credit for being a good one until he 
proves himself unworthy the confidence we repose in him. 

Dickens 



Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but 
of little things, in which smiles and kindnesses and small 
obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve 
the heart, and secure comfort. 

Sir H. Davy. 



The grand essentials of happiness are, something to do, 
something to love, and something to hope for. 

Chalmers. 



Good deeds ring clear through heaven like a bell. 

Richter. 



January 8. 



There are no inclinations in women which more sur- 
prise me than their passions for chalk and china. The 
first of these maladies wears out in a little time; but, 
when a woman is visited with the second, it generally 
takes possession of her for life. China vessels are play- 
things for women of all ages. An old lady of fourscore 
shall be as busy in cleaning an Indian mandarin as her 

great-granddaughter is in dressing her baby. 

Addison* 



Fade, with thy freight of memories fond, 
O Year ! to seek the land beyond. 

Rise from thy newer realm of bliss, 
O Year ! and bring fresh hopes to this. 

While we send up from thankful breasts 
God-speed and love to both our guests. 

Mary E. Blake. 



Take well whate'er shall chance, though bad it be: 
Take it for good, and 'twill' be good to thee. 

Thomas Randolph, 



Inquisitive people are the funnels of conversation : they 
do not take in any thing for their own use, but merely 
to pass it to another. 

Sir R. Steele. 



Never hold any one by the button or the hand in order 
to be heard out ; for, if people are unwilling to hear you, 
you had better hold your tongue than them. 

Lord Chesterfield. 



January 10. 



They're always abusing the women 

As a terrible plague to men ; 
They say we're the root of all evil, 

And repeat it again and again ; 
Of war and quarrels and bloodshed, — 

All mischief, be what it may ; 
And pray, then, why do you marry us 

If we're all the plagues you say? 
When you ought to be thanking heaven 

That your Plague is out of the way, 
You all keep fussing and fretting, 

Where is my Plague to-day? 



Aristopkaneu 



So called because he had a deal of airy-stuff in his writings. 

Dean Swift, 



January 11. 



Friday, long regarded as a day of ill omen, has been an 
eventful one in American history. 

Friday, Columbus sailed on his voyage of discovery. 

Friday, ten weeks after, he discovered America. 

Friday, Henry III. of England gave John Cabot his com- 
mission, which led to the discovery of North America. 

Friday, St. Augustine, the oldest town in the United States, 
was founded. 

Friday, the " Mayflower/ ' with the Pilgrims, arrived at 
Plymouth; and on Friday they signed that august com- 
pact, the forerunner of the present Constitution. 

Friday, George Washington was born. 

Friday, Bunker Hill was seized and fortified. 

Friday, the surrender of Saratoga was made. 

Friday, Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown ; and on Friday 
the motion was made in Congress that the United Colonies 
were, and of right ought to be, free and independent. 

Americans surely ought not to be afraid of Friday. 



January 12. 



An ounce of good cheer is worth a ton of melancholy. 

Samuel Smiles, 



Opportunity has hair in front : behind she is bald. If 
you seize her by the forelock, you may hold her ; but, if 
suffered to escape, not Jupiter himself can catch her again. 

From the Latin. 



A young man declared to Dr. Parr that he would believe 
nothing he did not understand. "Then, sir," said the 
doctor, "your creed would be the shortest of any man 
whom I ever knew." 



January 13. 



I know not if the year shall send 

Tidings to us-ward as a friend, 

And salutation, and such things, 

Bear on his wings, 

As the soul turns and thirsts unto 

With hungering eyes, and lips that sue 

For that sweet food which makes all new. 

I know not if his light shall be 

Darkness, or else light verily : 

I know but that it will not part 

Heart's faith from heart, 

Truth from the trust in truth, nor hope 

From sight of days unsealed that ope 

Beyond one poor year's horoscope. 

A, C. Swinburne. 



January 14. 



In January a man spends a few minutes in the sunshine, 

but all the rest of the day in the chimney-corner. 

Portugal, 



A commonplace life, we say, and we sigh ; 

But why should we sigh as we say? 
The commonplace sun in the commonplace sky 

Makes up the commonplace day. 
The moon and the stars are commonplace things, 

The flower that blooms, and the bird that sings ; 
But sad were the world, and dark our lot, 

If flowers failed and the sun shone not. 
And God, who sees each separate soul, 

Out of commonplace lives makes his beautiful whole. 

Susan Coolidge. 

He who rises late must trot all day, and will scarcely 

overtake his business at night. 

Fuller. 



January 15. 



HOW TO CORRECTLY ASCERTAIN THE AGE OF A LADY. 

I first ask the lady accused her own age. I then in- 
quire of her "dearest friends." I next ascertain the dif- 
ference between the two accounts (which frequently varies 
from five to forty years) : and, dividing that difference by 
2, I add that quotient to the lady's own representation; 
and the result is the lady's age as near as a lady's age 
can be ascertained. 

Example. — Mrs. Wellington Seymour gives herself out to be 28. Her 
friends, Mrs. McCabe, Mrs. Alfred Stevens, Madame Cornichon, and Miss 
Jerkins, indignantly declare that they will eat their respective heads off if she 
is a day younger than 46. Now, the disputed account stands thus: — 

YEARS. 

Mrs. Seymour's age, as represented by her friends 46 

Mrs. Seymour's age, as represented by herself 28 

Difference between the two accounts 18 

That difference has to be divided by 2, which, I believe, will give 9. If that 
is added to Mrs. Seymour's own statement, the result obtained will be the 
answer required. Accordingly Mrs. Wellington Seymour's age is yj^ — a fact, 
which, upon consulting the family Bible, I find to be perfectly correct, — and I 
hope Mrs. Seymour will some day forgive me for publishing it. 

Punch, 



January 16. 



A Quarrelsome Man. — Dr. Johnson once said, in 
speaking of a quarrelsome fellow, "If he had two ideas 
in his head, they would fall out with one another.' ' 



Many unhappy persons seem to imagine that they are 
always in an amphitheatre, with the assembled world as 
spectators; whereas, all the while, they are playing to 
empty benches. 



A beneficent person is like a fountain watering the earth 
and spreading fertility : it is therefore more delightful and 
more honorable to give than receive. 

Epicurus, 



January 17. 



Soon as the silent shades of night withdrew, 

The ruddy morn disclosed at once to view 

The face of nature in a rich disguise, 

And brightened every object to my eyes; 

For every shrub, and ' every blade of grass, 

And every pointed thorn, seemed wrought in glass : 

The spreading oak, the beech, and towering pine, 

Glazed over, in the freezing ether shine. 

Philips. 



What can be more delicately beautiful than the specta- 
cle which sometimes salutes the eye at the breakfast- 
room window, occasioned by the hoar-frost dew? If a 
jeweller had come to dress every plant over night to 
surprise an Eastern sultan, he could not produce any 
thing like the "pearly drops" or the silvery plumage. 

Leigh Hunt, 



January 18, 



Blessed are they who see, and yet who believe not ! 

Yea, blest are they who look on graves, and still 

Believe none dead; who see proud tyrants ruling, 

And yet believe not in the strength of evil; 

Blessed are they who see the wandering poor, 

And yet believe not that their God forsakes them; 

Who see the blind worm creeping, yet believe not 

That even that is left without a path. 

Leopold Schefer. 

If fortune, with a smiling face, 

Strews roses on your way, 
When shall we stoop to pick them up? 

To-day, my friend, to-day ! 

But should she frown with face of care, 

And talk of coming sorrow, 
When shall we grieve, if grieve we must? 

To-morrow, friend, to-morrow ! 



January 19. 



AUNT POLLY'S ADVICE. 

If things go wrong in the household, 

As they often will, you know, 
Or you're worried out with cares that vex, 

And the children try you so, 
Don't sit in the vale of shadows, 

Or stoop to be a scold : 

Twill only make bad worse, you see, 

While you grow gray and old. 

Helen Rich, 



A cucumber is bitter : throw it away. There are briers 
in the road : turn aside from them. This is enough. Do 
not add, And why were such things made in the world? 

Marcus Antoninus. 



Three degrees of mining speculation : Positive, mine ; 
comparative, miner; superlative, minus. 



January 20. 



Sometimes, says John Newton, I compare the troubles 
we have to undergo in the course of a year to a great 
bundle of fagots, far too large for us to lift. But God 
does not require us to carry the whole at once. He mer- 
cifully unties the bundle, and gives us first one stick, 
which we are to carry to-day, and then another, which we 
are to carry to-morrow, and so on. This we might easily 
manage if we would only take the burden appointed for 
us each day; but we choose to increase our trouble by 
carrying yesterday's stick over again to-day, and adding 
to-morrow's burden to our load before we are required to 
bear it. 



Who never ate his bread in sorrow, 
Who never spent the darksome hours 

Weeping and watching for the morrow, 
He knows you not, ye unseen Powers. 

Goethe, 



January 21. 



I find the gayest castles in the air that were ever 
piled, far better for comfort and for use than the dun- 
geons in the air, that are daily dug and caverned out by 
grumbling, discontented people.* 

A man should make life and nature happier to us, or 
he had better never been born. An old French verse 
runs in my translation : — 

" Some of your griefs you have cured, 

And the sharpest you still have survived; 

But what torments of pain you endured 

From evils that never arrived ! " 

Emerson, 



The gravest beast is an ass, the gravest bird is an 
owl, the gravest fish is an oyster, and the gravest man 

is a fool ! 

Joe Miller. 



January 22. 



SERVE GOD AND BE CHEERFUL. 

" Serve God and be cheerful," self-balanced, 
Whether Fortune smile sweetly or frown. 
Christ stood king before Pilate : within me 
I carry the sceptre and crown. 

" Serve God and be cheerful.' , Make brighter 
The brightness that falls to your lot : 
The rare or the daily-sent blessing 

Profane not with gloom and with doubt. 

" Serve God and be cheerful." Live nobly, 
Do right, and do good. Make the best 
Of the gifts and the work put before you, 
And to God, without fear, leave the rest. 

Willia?n Newell, D.D. 



January 23. 



I cannot but take notice of the wonderful love of God 
to mankind, who, in order to encourage obedience to his 
laws, has annexed a present as well as a future reward to 
a good life, and has so interwoven our duty and happiness 
together, that, while we are discharging our obligations to 
the one, we are at the same time making the best pro- 
vision for the other. 



Melmoth, 



Whatever you dislike in another person, take care to 

correct in yourself. 

Sprat, 



A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck. 

Garfield, 



Care's no cure. 



January 24. 



It's no in titles nor in rank, 

It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, 

To purchase peace and rest; 
It's no in makin' muckle mair, 
It's no in books, it's no in lear, 

To make us truly blest : 
If Happiness hae not her seat 

And centre in the breast, 
We may be wise or rich or great, 

But never can be blest. 

Robert Burns. 



The Rev. Mr. Swing says "that a novel is the world's 
truth with a beautiful woman walking through it." Gen- 
erally, we may add, with a man after her. 



January 25. 



" You see, we don't propose to warm our house with a 
wood-fire, but only to adorn it. It is an altar-fire that we 
will kindle every evening, just to light up our room, and 
show it to advantage. How charming every thing looks at 
your mother's in that time between daylight and dark, when 
you all sit round the hearth, and the fire lights up the pic- 
tures and the books, and makes every thing look so dreamy 
and beautiful ! " 

" You are a little poet, my dear. It will be your specialty 
to turn life into poetry." 

And that is what I call woman's genius. To make life 
beautiful; to keep down and out of sight the hard, dry, 
prosaic side, and keep up the poetry, — that is my idea of 
our "mission." I think woman ought to be what Hawthorne 
calls "The Artist of the Beautiful." 

Mrs. H. B. Stowe, in "My Wife and L" 



January 26. 



I see in this world two heaps of human happiness and 
misery. Now, if I can take but the smallest bit from one 
heap, and add it to the other, I carry a point. If, as I go 
home, a child has dropped a halfpenny, and if, by giving it 
another, I can wipe away its tears, I feel that I have done 
something. I should be glad, indeed, to do greater things ; 
but I will not neglect this. 



John Newton, 



Never go gloomily, man with a mind; 

Hope is a better companion than fear; 

Providence, ever benignant and kind, 

Gives with a smile what you take with a tear, 

All will be right : 

Look to the light, — 

Morning is ever the daughter of night : 

All that is black will be all that is bright. 

Cheerily, cheerily, then ! cheer up ! 



Tupper. 



January 27. 



When Grief shall come to thee, 

Think not to flee ; 

For Grief, with steady pace, 

Will win the race : 

Nor crowd her forth with Mirth ; 

For at thy hearth, 

When Mirth is tired and gone, 

Will Grief sit on : 

But make of her thy friend, 

And in the end 

Her counsels will grow sweet ; 

And with swift feet 

Three lovelier than she 

Will come to thee, — 

Calm Patience, Courage strong, 

And Hope, — erelong. 

Henrietta R. Elliott, 



January 28. 



Sit not like a mourner, brother, by the grave of that dear 

Past: 
Throw the Present ; 'tis thy servant only when 'tis overcast. 
Give battle to the leagued world : if thou'rt worthy, truly 

brave, 
Thou shalt make the hardest circumstance a helper or a 

slave. 



Alexander Smith, 



If our faith were but more simple, 
We would take Him at his word, 

And our lives would be all sunshine 
In the presence of our Lord. 

Faber. 



Make the best of things. 

Koran. 



January 29. 



This wretched and joyless expression on the American 
face is so common that we are hardened to seeing it, and 
look for nothing better. Only when, by chance, some 
blessed, rollicking, sunshiny boy or girl or man or woman 
flashes the beam of their laughing countenance into the 
level gloom do we even know that we are in the dark. 

Hehn Hunt. 



Never give way to melancholy. Nothing encroaches more. 
I fight against it vigorously. One great remedy is, to take 
short views of life. Are you happy now? Are you likely 
to remain so till this evening, or next month, or next year ? 
Then, why destroy present happiness by a distant misery 
which may never come at all, or you may never live to see ? 
For every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of 
them shadows of your own making. 

Sydney Smith. 



January 30. 



Jack Frost in Janiveer 

Nips the nose of the nascent year. 

Brescia, 



Children are travellers newly arrived in a strange coun- 
try: we should therefore make conscience not to mislead 

them. 

Locke, 



There are three companions with whom you should al- 
ways keep on good terms : — 
First, your Wife. 
Second, your Stomach. 
Third, your Conscience. 



There is no cream like that which rises on spilled milk. 

Beecher, 



January 31. 



Forget not all the sunshine of the way 
By which the Lord hath led thee, — answered prayers, 
And joys unasked, strange blessings, lifted cares, 
Grand promise-echoes ! Thus each page shall be 
A record of God's love and faithfulness to thee. 

Frances Ridley HavergaL 



I resolved, that like the sun, so long as my day lasted, I 
would look on the bright side of every thing. 

Despondency in a nice case is the overweight that may 

make you kick the beam and the bucket both at once. In 

short, never meet trouble half way, but let him have the 

whole walk for his pains. I have even known him to give 

up his visit in sight of the house. Besides, the best fence 

against care is a ha, ha ! Wherefore take care to have one 

all round you wherever you can. 

Tom Hood. 



February 1. 



The February sunshine steeps your boughs, 
And tints the buds and swells the leaves within. 

Bryant. 



When the winds of winter 

Through the forests blow, 
And the moonbeams glitter 

Coldly on the snow, 
Sweet it is to fancy, 

Though the earth is chill, 
How her heart is keeping 

Thoughts of summer still. 

Emily Huntington Miller. 



Do not force on thy neighbor a hat that hurts thine own 

head. 

Heider. 



February 2, 



FEBRUARY — IMPATIENCE. 

Earth captive held 

By winter, a foe 

Him deems, to weld 

Such fetters. Below 

Her violets close-celled 

Flutter to go. 

Earth, when she's free 

To bud and blow, 

And feel through every fibre of each tree 

The strength to grow, 

Will say, " 'Twas winter gave it me ! " 

And in the sunshine bless the snow. 

Alice Ward, 



One hand cannot expiate the wrong of the other. 

Talmud, 



February 3. 



My Saviour, what thou didst of old 

When thou wast dwelling here, 
Thou doest yet for them, who, bold 

In faith, to thee draw near. 
As thou hadst pity on the blind, 

According to thy Word, 
Thou sufferedst me thy grace to find, 

Thy Light hast on me poured. 

And words of thine can never fail; 

My fears are past and o'er; 
My soul is glad with light, — the veil 

Is on my heart no more. 
Thou blesseth me, and forth I fare, 

Free from my old disgrace, 
And fellow on with joy where'er 

Thy footsteps, Lord, I trace. 

De la Motte Fouque. 



February 4. 



It is selfish to dwell on our griefs, as though some 

strange thing had happened to us, as though they were 

too important to be relieved, or it were a virtue to sink 

under them. That bereavement seems rather sanctified 

which saddens the heart not over much, and softens 

without withering it. 

H. Hooker. 



What dost thou mean by fortune? If mere chance, 
then to envy the lot of others, or to murmur at thy own, 
is folly ; if providence, then it is impiety. 

Lucas. 



February 5. 



The hour whose happy- 
Unalloyed moments 
I would eternalize, 
Ten thousand mourners 
Well pleased see end. 

The bleak, stern hour, 
Whose severe moments 
I would annihilate, 
Is passed by others 
In warmth, light, joy. 

Time so complained of, 
Who to no one man 
Shows partiality, 
Brings round to all men 
Some undimmed hours. 

Matthew Arnold. 



February 6. 



So long as we have nothing to say to God, nothing to do 
with him save in the sunshine of the mind when we feel him 
near us, we are poor creatures, willed upon, not willing, reeds, 
— flowering reeds, it may be, and pleasant to behold, but 
only reeds blown about by the wind; not bad, but poor, 
creatures. 

George Macdonald* 

Oh, trifling tasks so often done, 

Yet ever to be done anew ! 

Oh, cares which come with every sun, 

Morn after morn, the long years through ! 

We shrink beneath their paltry sway, — 

The irksome calls of every day. 

Ah ! more than martyr's aureole, 
And more than hero's heart of fire, 
We need the humble strength of soul 
W T hich daily toils and ills require. 
Sweet Patience ! grant us, if you may, 
An added grace for every day. 

Elizabeth A. Allen. 



February 7. 



Some Christians are too dejected. They get under the 
covert of a peculiar theology, or ensconce themselves in 
shadowy caves of wilfulness or pertinacity or unbelief, and 
then complain that they cannot see the Sun of righteous- 
ness. He lightens the world. Let them come out beneath 
his beams, and at once they will feel the fire. Their shivering 
faith, which with them is rather the reminiscence of heat 
than a resorting to its unfailing source, will soon mount up 

to fervor. 

Rev. y. Hamilton. 



Hope is the cordial of the human heart. 

Burns. 



February 8. 



OBSERVATIONS OF REV. GABE TUCKER. 

You may notch it on de palin's as a mighty resky plan 

To make your judgment by de clothes that kivers up a man, 

For I hardly needs to tell you how you often come ercross 

A fifty-dollar saddle on a twenty-dollar hoss. 

An', wukin' in de low groun's, you diskiver as you go, 

Dat de fines' shuck may hide de meanes' nubbin' in a row. 

I think a man has got a mighty slender chance for heben 
Dat holds onto his piety but one day out ob seben ; 
Dat talks about de sinner with a heap o' solemn chat, 
An' nebber drops a nickel in de missionary hat ; 
Dat's foremost in de meetin '-house for raisin' all de chunes, 
But lays aside his 'ligion wid his Sunday pantaloons. 

I nebber judge o' people dat I meets along de way 

By de places whar dey comes from and de houses whar dey 

stay ; 
For de bantam chicken's awful fond o' roostin' pretty high, 
An' de turkey-buzzard sails above de eagle in de sky ; 
Dey ketches little minners in de middle ob de sea, 
An' you finds de smalles' possum up de bigges' kind o' tree. 

Scribtter. 



February 9. 



It is a great misfortune to have a fretful disposition. It 
takes the fragrance out of one's life, and leaves only weeds 
where a cheerful disposition would cause flowers to bloom. 



Always say a kind word if you can, if only that it may 
come in, perhaps, with singular opportuneness, entering 
some mournful man's darkened room like a beautiful fire-fly, 
whose happy convolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting 
his many troubles. 

Arthur Helps. 



February 10. 



It is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the 
misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in 
order to be equally distributed among the whole species, 
those who now think themselves the most unhappy would 
prefer the share they are already possessed of, before that 
which would fall to them by such a division. 

Addison, 



So what signifies wishing and hoping for better times? 
We may make these times better, if we bestir ourselves. 

Ben Franklin. 



It is said every other demon attacks in the front, but 
Slander, which assaults from behind. 

Parsu 



February 11. 



Rise ! if the Past detains you, 

Her sunshine and storms forget : 

No chains so unworthy to hold you 

As those of a vain regret. 

Sad or bright, she is lifeless ever ; 

Cast her phantom arms away, 

Nor look back, save to learn the lesson 

Of a nobler strife — to-day. 



Adelaide A. Procter, 



Look here, dear friend, get you away and do something ; 
for pity's sake, do something ! Do some good somewhere. 
Cart-wheels grumble and creak sometimes for want of 
grease, but very often it is for want of work. I never knew 
a grumbler yet that ever had a moment to do any good with. 

Mark G. Pearse, 



February 12, 



Ten measures of garrulity, says the Talmud, were sent 
down upon the earth ; and the women took nine. I have 
known in my life eight terrific talkers, and five of them 
were of the masculine gender. But, supposing that the 
rabbis were right in allotting to" the women a ninefold 
proportion of talkativeness, I confess that I have inherited 
my mother's share. 



South ey. 



Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, 

but great minds rise above it. 

Washington Irving. 



All who joy would win 
Must share it. Happiness was born a twin. 

Byron. 



February 13. 



Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine ! 
Great is thy name in the rubric. Like unto thee, assur- 
edly, there is no other mitred father in the calendar. 

Lamb. 



To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day, 
All in the morning betime. 



Hamlet. 



It is a very odd notion, alluded to by Shakespeare, 
that on this day birds begin to couple. 



N. Webster. 



February 14. 



What if we should quarrel? 

Bless you, all folks do ! 
Will you take the war ill, 

Yet half like it too ? 
When I storm and jangle, 

Obstinate, absurd, 
Will you sit and wrangle, 

Just for the last word ? 
Or, while poor Love, crying, 

Upon tiptoe stands, 
Ready plumed for flying, 

Will you smile, shake hands, 
And, the truth beholding, 

With a kiss divine 
Stop my rough mouth's scolding? 

Bless you, Valentine ! 



Mrs, Craik. 



February 15. 



Let poets sing 
The chicken's wing, 
And buckwheat-cakes and griddlefishes, 
And side by side 
Place lobster fried, 
Pork-chops, and other comic dishes; 
But yet, unto my dying day, 

While o'er my reason I am lord, 
I'll stand before the world, and say, 
i( The fish-ball is its own reward ! " 

R. P. Munkitriek. 



The woman who makes flannel shirts for the Hottentots 

is very apt to have Hottentots in her own house whose 

shirts need mending. 

J. G. Holland. 



February 16. 



It's no use to cry over spilt milk, we all know ; but it's 
easier said than done, that. Womenkind, and especially 
single folks, will take on dreadful at the fadin' of their 
roses ; and their frettin' only seems to make the thorns 
look sharper. 

Our minister used to say to sister Sal (and, when she 
was young, she was a rael witch, a most an everlastin' 
sweet girl), " Sally," he used to say, "now's the time to 
lam, when you are young : store your mind well, dear ; 
and the fragrance will remain long after the rose has shed 
its leaves. The otter of roses is stronger than the rose, 
and a plaguy sight more valuable." 

Samuel Slick of Slickville (T. C. Halibzirton). 



February 17. 



REST ON THE SABBATH. 



It was the saying of Sir Robert Peel, "I never knew 
a man to escape failure, in either body or mind, who 
worked seven days in the week." 



It is by the daily lives of Christians that Christ is 
either honored or dishonored. 

Martha Whiting. 



On Sunday heaven's gate stands ope : 

Blessings are plentiful and rife, 
More plentiful than hope. 

George Herbert. 



February 18. 



Do not look for wrong and evil : 

You will find them if you do. 
As you measure for your neighbor, 

He will measure back to you. 

Look for goodness, look for gladness : 
You will meet them all the while. 

If you bring a smiling visage 
To the glass, you meet a smile. 

Alice Cary, 



I hate a complainer. 

Johnson, 



February 19. 



We wait for thy coming, sweet wind of the South, 
The touch of thy light wings, the kiss of thy mouth; 
For the yearly evangel thou bearest from God, — 
Resurrection and life to the graves of the sod. 
Oh, soul of the springtime, its balm and its breath ! 
Oh, light of its darkness, and life of its death ! 
Why wait we thy coming? Why linger so long 
The warmth of thy breathing, the voice of thy song? 

John G. Whittier. 



Every evil to which we do not succumb is a bene- 
factor. 

As the Sandwich Islander believes that the strength and 
valor of the enemy he kills passes into himself, so we 
gain the strength of the temptation we resist. 

Emersmu 



February 20. 



CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON. 

I think we are too ready with complaint 

In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope 
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope 

Of yon gray bank of sky, we might be faint 

To muse upon eternity's constraint 

Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope 
Must widen early, is it well to droop 

For a few days consumed in loss and taint? 

O pusillanimous heart, be comforted, — 

And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road, 

Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread 
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod 

To meet the flints? — At least it may be said, 
" Because the way is short \ I thank thee, God ! " 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 



February 21. 



If the world seems cold to you, 

Kindle fires to warm it : 
Let their comfort hide from view 

Winters that deform it. 
Hearts as frozen as your own 

To that radiance gather: 

You will soon forget to moan, 

" Ah, the cheerless weather ! " 

Lucy Larcom, 

As welcome as sunshine in every place 

Is the beaming approach of a good-natured face ; 

As genial as sunshine, like warmth to impart, 

Is a good-natured word from a good-natured heart. 



Real glory 
Springs from the silent conquest of ourselves. 

Thomson. 



February 22. 



Soldier and statesman, rarest unison; 

High-poised example of great duties done 
Simply as breathing; a world's honors worn 

As life's indifferent gifts to all men born. 
Dumb for himself, unless it were to God, 

But for his barefoot soldiers eloquent; 
Tramping the snow to coral where they trod, 

Held by his awe in hollow-eyed content. 
Modest, yet firm as nature's self; unblamed 

Save by the men his nobler temper shamed. 
Not honored then or now because he awed 

The popular voice, but that he still withstood. 
Broad minded, higher souled, there is but one 

Who has all this, and our's and all men's — 
Washington. 

J. R. Lowell. 



February 23. 



CONTENTMENT. 

Lovely, lasting peace, appear ! 
This world itself, if thou art here, 
Is once again with Eden blest; 
And man contains it in his breast. 

Go search among your idle dreams, 
Your busy or your vain extremes, 
And find a life of equal bliss, 
Or own the next begun in this. 

Thomas ParnelL 



The cloud-lights of a wintry sky have a clear purity 
and brilliancy that no other months can rival. 

Neither are trees, as seen in winter, destitute of their 
own peculiar beauty. 

Harriet B. Stowe. 



Though all great deeds were proved but fables fine ; 

Though earth's old story could be told anew ; 

Though the sweet fashions loved of them that sue 
Were empty as the ruined Delphian shrine ; 
Though God did never man in words benign, 

With sense of his great fatherhood endue ; 

Though life immortal were a dream untrue, 
And He that promised it were not divine ; 
Though soul, though spirit, were not, and all hope 

Reaching beyond the bourn melted away; 
Though virtue had no goal, and good no scope, 

But both were doomed to end with this our clay; 
Though all these were not, — to the ungraced heir 
Would this remain, — to live as though they were. 

Jean Ingelow. 



February 25. 



"At Frankfort," said little Simson, "I once saw a 
watch that did not believe in the existence of a watch- 
maker. It had a very poor movement by the way, and 

a pinchbeck case." 

Heinrich Heine. 



Give me the benerit of your convictions, if you have 
any, but keep your doubts to yourself, for I have enough 
of my own. 



Goethe. 



There is strength 
Deep-bedded in our hearts, of which we seek 
But little till the shafts of heaven have pierced 
Its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent 
Before her gems are found? 

Mrs. Hemans. 



February 26. 



FEBRUARY. 

I've brought some snowdrops, — only just a few, 
But quite enough to prove the world awake, 

Cheerful and hopeful in the frosty dew, 
And for the pale sun's sake. 

Christina G. RossetH. 



Man should trust in God as if God did all, and labor 

himself as if man did all. 

Chalmers. 



I know that sunshine, through whatever rift, 
How shaped it matters not, upon my halls 
Paints disks as perfect-rounded as its source. 
And, like its antitype, the ray divine, 
However finding entrance, perfect still, 
Repeats the image unimpaired of God. 

Lowell. 



Late February days ; and now, at last, 

Might you have thought that winter's woe was past, 

So fair the sky was, and so soft the air. 

The happy birds were hurrying here and there, 

As something soon would happen. Reddened now 

The hedges, and in gardens many a bough 

Was overbold of buds. Sweet days, indeed. 

William Morris, 



February makes a bridge, and March breaks it. 

Herbert. 



Cheerfulness is also an excellent wearing quality. It 
has been called the bright weather of the heart. 

Smiles. 



February 28. 



Never hunt trouble. However dead a shot one may be, 

the gun he carries on such expeditions is sure to kick or 

go off half-cocked. Trouble will come soon enough ; and, 

when he does come, receive him as pleasantly as possible. 

Like the tax-collector, he is a disagreeable chap to have 

in one's house ; but, the more amiably you greet him, the 

sooner he will go away. 

Artemus Ward, 



"A wilderness," says neighbor Black, 

"A desert waste and wide, 
Where rank weeds choke, and ravens croak, 

And noisome reptiles hide ! " 
"Ay, so it is," says neighbor White; 

" But haply you and I 
Might clear the ground our homes around — 

Come, neighbor, let us try." 

Frederick La7igbridge, in Sunday Magazine* 



February 29. 



What is so rare as a day in June? Give it up? The 
29 th of February. 

Superfluous woman ! Now is your time. To-day it is 
woman, not man, who proposes. 



A maid unasked may own a well-placed flame : 
Not loving first, but loving wrong, is shame. 

Ovid. 



Why should not woman seek her happiness 
With brow as unabashed as man may wear 
In seeking his ? Ah ! lack of candor here 
Works more regrets for woman and for man 
Than we can reckon. 

Epes Sargent, 



March 1. 



Slayer of the winter, art thou here again? 

Oh welcome, thou that bring'st the summer nigh ! 
The bitter wind makes not thy victory vain, 

Nor will we mock thee for thy faint blue sky. 

Welcome, O March ! whose kindly days and dry 
Make April ready for the throstle's song, 
Thou first redresser of the winter's wrong ! 

Yea, welcome March ! and though I die ere June, 
Yet for the hope of life I give thee praise, 

Striving to swell the burden of the tune 

That even now I hear thy brown birds raise, 

Who sing, " O joy ! a new year has begun : 

What happiness to look upon the sun ! " 

William Morris, 



March 2. 



f A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. " 



"He that showeth mercy, let him do it with cheerful- 
ness." 






A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch 

on a railroad track, — but one inch between wreck and 

smooth-rolling prosperity* 

Beecher, 



I do wish that all tired people did but know the infi- 
nite rest there is in fencing off the six days from the 
seventh, — in anchoring the business-ships of our daily life 
as the Saturday draws to its close, leaving them to ride 
peacefully upon the flow or the ebb until Monday morn- 
ing comes again. 

Anna Warner. 



March 3. 



What a beautiful word is spring ! At least one fancies 
so, knowing the meaning of it, and being used to identify 
it with so many pleasant things. An Italian might find 
it harsh, and object to the sp and the terminating con- 
sonant : but if he were a proper Italian, a man of fancy, 
the worthy countryman of Petrarch and Ariosto, we 
would convince him that the word was an excellent 
good word, crammed as full of beauty as a bud; and 
that s had the whistling of the brooks in it ; / and r the 
force and roughness of whatsoever is animated and pic- 
turesque ; ing the singing of the birds ; and the whole 
word the suddenness and salience of all that is lively, 
sprouting, and new. 



Leigh Hunt, 



Sunshine is like love, — it makes every thing shine with 
its own beauty. 

Wilson. 



March 4. 



As the wild air stirs and sways 
The tree-swung cradle of a child, 

So the breath of these rude days 
Rocks the year. Be calm and mild, 

Trembling hours : she will arise 

With new love within her eyes. 

Shelley. 



Our life is March weather, savage and serene in one 

hour. 

Emerson. 



Spring is over the world, the seeds buried in the earth 
burst to flower, but man's heart knoweth not the sweet 
divisions of the seasons. In winter or summer, autumn 
or spring, alike, his thoughts sow the germ of actions; 
and day after day his destiny gathers in her harvests. 

Bulwer Lytton. 



March 5. 



For well I know, o'er sunny seas 
The bluebird waits for April skies ; 

And at the roots of forest-trees 

The Mayflowers sleep in fragrant ease, 

And violets hide their azure eyes. 

O thou, by winds of grief o'erblown 
Beside some golden summer's bier, 

Take heart ! Thy birds are only flown, 
Thy blossoms sleeping, tearful sown, 

To greet thee in the immortal year. 

Edna Dean Proctor, 



A calamity is always the better borne for not being 
previously dwelt upon. 



Mme. Bunsen. 



Love is sunshine : hate is shadow. 

Longfellow. 



March 6. 



Vague rumors are afloat in the air of a great and coming 
change, — Winter to be gone ; but he will not abdicate with- 
out a struggle. Day after day he rallies his scattered forces, 
and night after night pitches his white tents on the hills, and 
would fain regain his lost ground ; but the young prince in 
every encounter prevails. Slowly and reluctantly the gray 
old hero retreats up the mountain, till finally the south rain 
comes in earnest, and in a night he is dead. 

John Burroughs. 



None are so old as those who have outlived enthusi- 
asm. 

Be not simply good — be good for something. 

TJioreau. 






March 7. 



In this world, where there is so much real sorrow, and 
so much unnecessary grief of fret and worry ; where men 
stumble in rough paths, and so many push them down 
rather than help them up ; where tears are as common as 
smiles, and hearts ache so easily, but are poorly fed on 
higher joys, — how grateful ought we to be that God sends 
along, here and there, a natural heart-singer, — a man whose 
nature is large and luminous, and who, by his very carriage 
and spontaneous actions, calms, cheers, and helps his fel- 
lows. God bless the good natured, for they bless everybody 
else ! 



Beecher. 



March 8. 



Give me of the brook's faith, joyously sung 

Under clank of its icy chain ! 
Give one the patience that hides among 

Thy hilltops in mist and rain ! 
Lift me up from the clod, let me breathe thy breath, 

Thy beauty and strength give me ! 

Let me lose both the name and the meaning of death 

In the life that I share with thee ! 

Lucy Larcom, 



Srr down, sad soul, and count 

The moments flying: 
Come, tell the sad amount 

That's lost by sighing. 
How many smiles? A score? 
Then, laugh and count no more, 

For day is dying. 

Tennyson. 



March 9. 



Dear dead ! they have become 

Like guardian angels to us; 
And distant heaven like home, 

Through them begins to woo us; 
Love that was earthly, wings 
Its flight to holier places : 

The dead are sacred things 
That multiply our graces. 

Those whom we loved on earth 

Attract us now to heaven; 
Who shared our grief and mirth, 

Back to us now are given : 
They move with noiseless foot 

Gravely and sweetly round us, 
And their soft touch hath cut 
Full many a chain that bound us. 

F. W. Faber 



March 10. 



Be more cheerful ; do not worry : 
There is time enough to do 

Every day the daily duties 

That your Father sendeth you, 

And to find some little moments 
For heart-music fresh and new. 



A man must be excessively Stupid, as well as unchari- 
table, who believes there is no virtue but on his own 

side. 

Addison. 



In conversation with the egotist, all subjects lead t< 
his "I," as "All roads lead to Rome." 



March 11. 



I would not have my life go on, 
A level stretch from sun to sun, 
With nothing for my gaze to meet 
But pleasant places for the feet, 
No glorious hills for me to mount, 
No obstacles by which to count 
My progress on the path I tread, 
And naught but sunshine overhead. 

If life ran on so smooth a plane, 
With more of bliss, and less of pain; 
If here we never suffered loss, 
But held the gold without the dross, 
And found the treasures in our trust 
Untarnished by a grain of rust, — 
If unto us such bliss were given, 
Oh ! would we have one thought of heaven ? 

Josephine Pollard. 



March 12. 



Though the transient springs have failed thee, 
Though the founts of youth are dried, 

Wilt thou among the mouldering stones 
In weariness abide? 

Up and onward ! Toward the East 

Green oases thou shalt find, — 
Streams that rise from higher sources 

Than the pools thou leav'st behind. 



Life has import more inspiring 
Than the fancies of thy youth : 

It has hopes as high as heaven, 
It has labors, it has truth. 

It has wrongs that may be righted, 
Noble deeds that may be done : 

Its great battles are unfought, 
Its great triumphs are unwon. 



Mrs. A. C. L. Botta. 



March 13. 



Things seem to die, but die not. The spring-showers 
Die on the bosom of the motherly Earth, 

But rise again in fruits and leaves and flowers; 
And every death is nothing but a birth. 

Lucretius, 



Of all bad things with which mankind are curst, 
Their own bad tempers surely are the worst. 

Menander. 



Learn thy true self, and live it. 

Pindar* 



March 14. 



DAFFODIL. 

Gold tassel upon March's bugle-horn, 

Whose blithe reveille blows from hill to hill, 
And every valley rings, O Daffodil ! 

What promise for the season newly born? 

Shall wave on wave of flowers, full tide of corn, 
O'erflow the world, then fruited Autumn fill 
Hedgerow and garth? Shall tempest, blight, or chill 

Turn all felicity to scathe and scorn? 

Tantarrara ! the joyous Book of Spring 
Lies open, writ in blossoms ; not a bird 
Of evil augury is seen or heard. 

Come, now ! like Pan's old crew we'll dance and sing, 

Or Oberon's ; for hill and valley ring 

To March's bugle-horn : Earth's blood is stirred. 

W. A. 



March 15. 



It is the first mid-day of March, 
Each minute sweeter than before : 

The redbreast sings from the tall larch 
That stands beside our door. 

There is a blessing in the air, 

Which seems a sense of joy to yield 

To the bare trees, and mountains bare, 
And grass in the green field. 

Wordsworth. 



Many Christians do greatly wrong themselves with a dull 
and heavy kind of sullenness ; who, not suffering them- 
selves to delight in any worldly thing, are thereupon 
ofttimes. so heartless that they delight in nothing. 

Bishop Hall. 



March 16. 



Who said that March was a scold and a shrew? 
Who said she had nothing on earth to do 
But tempests and furies and rages to brew? 
Why, look at the wealth she has lavished on you ! 

O March that blusters, and March that blows, 
What color under your footsteps glows ! 
Beauty you summon from winter snows, 
And you are the pathway that leads to the rose. 

Celia Thaxter. 



When daffodils begin to peer 

With heigh ! the doxy over the dale, 

Why, then comes in the sweet o' the year, 
For the red blood reigns in the winters pale. 

Shakespeare. 



March 17. 



THE OAK. 

How doth his patient strength the rude March wind 
Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer breeze, 

And win the soil that fain would be unkind, 
To swell his revenues with proud increase ! 

So from oft converse with life's wintry gales, 

Should man learn how to clasp with tougher roots 

The inspiring earth; how otherwise avails 
The leaf, creating sap that sunward shoots. 

Lowell, 



I dare no more fret than I dare curse and swear. 

John Wesley, 



March 18. 



A PLAIN MAN'S PHILOSOPHY. 

"A gloomy world/' says neighbor Black, 

" Where clouds of dreary dun, 
In masses rolled, the sky infold, 

And blot the noonday sun ! " 
" Ay, so it is," says neighbor White ; 

"But haply you and I 
Might shed a ray to cheer the way — 

Come, neighbor, let us try." 

"A vale of tears," says neighbor Black, 

" A vale of weary breath, 
Of soul-wrung sighs and hopeless eyes, 

From birth to early death ! " 
"Ay, so it is," says neighbor White; 

" But haply you and I, 
Just there and here, might dry a tear — 

Come, neighbor, let us try." 



March 19. 



"This world is not so bad a world 
As some would like to make it; 

For whether good or whether bad, 
Depends on how you take it." 



A negro minister widower, who married rather sooner 
than some of the sisters thought proper and becoming, 
excused himself as follows : " My dear brethren and 
sisters, my grief was greater than I could bear. I turned 
every way for peace and comfort, but none came. I 
searched the Scriptures from Ginisee to Reverlations, and 
found plenty of promises to the widder, but narry one to 
the widderer. And so I took it that the Lord didn't 
waste sympathy on a man when it was in his power to 
comfort himself; and, having a first-rate chance to marry 
in the Lord, I did so again. Besides, brethren, I consider 
that poor Betsy was just as dead as she would ever be." 



March 20. 



You observe a man becoming day by day holier, or 
advancing in station, or increasing in professional reputa- 
tion, and you set him down as a successful man in life. 
But if his home is an ill-regulated one, where no links 
of affection extend throughout the family, whose former 
domestics (and he has had more of them than he can 
well remember) look back upon their sojourn with him 
as one unblessed by kind words or deeds, I contend 
that that man has not been successful. 

Arthur Helps. 



He who loves to read, and knows how to reflect, has 
laid by a perpetual feast for his old age. 



March 21. 



When the hounds of Spring are on Winter's traces, 
The mother of months in meadow or plain 

Fills the shadows and windy places 
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain. 

Swinburne, 



March. Its tree, juniper; 
Its stone, blood-stone; 
Its motto, Courage and strength in times of danger. 

Ah, March ! we know thou art 
Kind-hearted, spite of ugly looks and threats, 
And out of sight are nursing April's violets ! 

Helen Hunt, 



March 22. 



Now when the budding spring escapes from winter's durance, 
Hope hath its flowering, and faith its sweet assurance. 
How shall our hearts be sad when Nature's face rejoices, 
And earth and air are glad with her tumultuous voices ? 
Ears that His message seek, and doubt not in possessing, 
To them the winds shall speak in undertones of blessing ; 
And to the seeing eyes, His gracious works beholding, 
No little bird that flies, no small green thing unfolding, 
But shall His love express who doth our souls deliver, 
Whose holy name we bless and magnify forever. 

Praise Him, O soul of mine ! nor ever cease from praising, 
Though olive-tree and vine be blighted in the raising ; 
Though flood and frost and fire assail me in one morning, 
And though my heart's desire shall perish without warning ! 
Still shall His rivers flow, the heavens declare His glory ; 
Still shall His green things grow, His winds repeat their story ; 
And I, who sit to-day beneath the cloud of sorrow, 
And see no opening way for sunshine for the morrow, 
Still by His mighty word upheld for fresh endeavor, 
Will magnify the Lord, and bless His name forever. 

Mary E. Bradley, 



March 23. 



OPPORTUNITY. 

And this I saw, or dreamed it in a dream : — 
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain ; 
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged 
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords 
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince's banner 
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes. 
A craven hung along the battle's edge, 
And thought, " Had I a sword of keener steel, — 
That blue blade that the king's son bears — but this 
Blunt thing ! " — He snapt and flung it from his hand, 
And, lowering, crept away, and left the field. 
Then came the king's son, wounded, sore bestead, 
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword, 
And ran and snatched it, and, with battle-shout 
Lifted afresh, he hewed his enemy down, 
And saved a great cause that heroic day. 

E. R. Sill. 



March 24. 



A subtle red 
Of life is kindling every twig and stalk 
Of lowly meadow growths ; the willows wrap 
Their stems in furry white ; the pines grow gray 
A little in the biting wind ; mid-day 
Brings tiny burrowed creatures, peeping out, 
Alert for sun. 

"77. 77." 



The " blues " are generally a sin. No one has a right to 
yield to disappointment or discouragement, or to distrust 
his heavenly Father, or to carry even the light burden of a 
half-conscious, unforgiven sin, or to overwork and exhaust 
the wonderful mechanism which God has given him. But 
repentance is as many-formed as sin ; and, when the sin is 
overwork, repentance is rest. 

Lyman Abbott, 



March 25. 



Never did a sunbeam shine in vain, and therefore no 
sunbeam that ever streaked this world with light could be 
finely lost. Yet the sunbeam, lovely as it is, has had its 
grave ; and there, sometimes for unnumbered ages, it has 
slept in undisturbed repose. What is coal but latent sun- 
beams, which need only to be ignited to start again into 
active life ? The sun, when many thousand years younger 
than he is now, cast forth his radiant beams on the surface 
of the world, and noble trees of ferns and other acrogens 
started at his bidding into vigorous life : they lived, died, 
and underwent changes which made them coal, — yes, coal ! 
and the old sun, he did it all. These sunbeams have long 
been burned in the form of coal ; and though, by ignition, 
their resurrection life is but a dim shadow of their early 
brightness, they are yet sunbeams. We have nothing but 
sunlight in summer or winter, think or talk as we may. The 
fire on our hearths, the gas in our tubes, the oil in our 
lamps, and the candles on our tables, are all products of the 
sunbeam. Brooke. 



March 26. 



When the hill-side breaks into green, every hollow of blue 
shade, every curve of tuft and plume and tendril, every 
broken sunbeam on spray of young leaves, is new. No 
spring is a representation of a former spring. 

Goethe. 



The dial 
Receives many shades, and each points to the sun : 
The shadows are many, the sunlight is one. 
Life's sorrows still fluctuate : God's love does not, 
And His love is unchanged when it changes our lot. 
Looking up to this light, which is common to all, 
And down to those shadows on each side, that fall 
In Time's silent aisle, so various for each, 
Is it nothing to know that they never can reach 
So far but that light lies beyond them forever ? 

Owen Meredith. 



March 27. 



Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, altogether past 
calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts, to be perma- 
nently useful, must be uniformly joyous, — a spirit all sun- 
shine, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright. 

Carlyle. 



Be cheerful : do not brood over fond hopes unrealized 
until a chain, link after link, is fastened on each thought 
and wound around the heart. Nature intended you to be 
the fountain-spring of cheerfulness and social life, and not 
the travelling monument of despair and melancholy. 

Arthur Helps. 



March 28. 



PENSEES. 

Bethink you, while the tears do run, 
No cloud would rise but for the sun. 

The sap is bitter in the bark 

That sweetens in the fruit above; 

And spirits toiling through the dark 
Shall reach at last their light of love. 

We hear the arrows in the dark go by: 

The cowering soul no longer soars or sings, 

Or it might know God's presence then most nigh, 
Our darkness being the shadow of his wings. 

Gerald Mas&ey. 



March 29. 



SNOWDROPS. 

These first flowers of spring, — what a gracious charm 
they have ! a charm which is all their own ! 

The meanest and poorest little blossom is more to us 
to-day than a whole parterre of gayly colored summer favor- 
ites will be a few months hence. 



"Make Thou my spirit pure and clear 
As are the frosty skies, 
Or this first snowdrop of the year 
That in my bosom lies." 



March 30. 



Though the sun scorches us sometimes, and gives us the 

headache, we do not refuse to acknowledge that we stand in 

need of his warmth. 

Philip de Momay, 



There is a bright side to religion, and I love to see 
Christians walking in the sunshine. I trust you have found 
this out for yourself. 



Mrs. E. Prentiss. 



O Sun ! of this great world, both eye and soul. 

Milton. 



March 31. 



March, just ready to depart, begins 
To soften into April. 



Bryant, 



Were a star quenched on high, 

For ages would its light, 
Still travelling downward from the sky, 

Shine on our mortal sight. 

So when a great man dies, 

For years beyond our ken 

The light he leaves behind him lies 

Upon the paths of men. 

Longfellow, 



April 1. 

The compliments of the season and a merry first of 
April to us all ! 

Take my word for this, reader, and say a fool told it 
you, if you please, that he who hath not a drachm of 
folly in his mixture, hath pounds of much worse matter in 
his composition. And what are commonly the world's re- 
ceived fools but such whereof the world is not worthy? 
And what have been some of the kindliest patterns of our 
species but so many darlings of absurdity, minions of the 
goddess and her white boys ? 

Reader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair con- 
struction, it is you, and not I, that are the April fool. 

Charles Lamb. 



April 2. 

Nothing is surer than that the soul will win what it 

wants. If it desires God, it will gain him. The principle 

of constancy in heavenly as in earthly affairs is greater than 

the greatest mood. 

E. S. Phelps. 



My name is April, sir: and I 
Often laugh, as often cry; 
And I cannot tell what makes me ! 
Only, as the fit o'ertakes me, 
I must dimple, smile, and frown, 
Laughing, though the tears roll down. 
But 'tis nature, sir, not art; 
And I'm happy at my heart. 

Mrs. Z. B. Gustafson. 



April 3. 

O rainy days ! O days of sun ! • 
What are ye all when the year is done? 

Who shall remember sun or rain? 
O years of loss ! O joyful years ! 
What are ye when all heaven appears? 

Who shall look back for joy or pain? 

W. P. Foster. 



To know how to say what other people only think, is 

what makes men poets and sages ; and to dare to say what 

others only dare to think, makes men martyrs or reformers, 

or both. 

Mrs. Charles. 



April 4. 

When we shall be endowed with our spiritual bodies, 
I think that they will be so constituted that we may send 
thoughts and feelings any distance in no time at all. 

Hawthorne, 



Many a parent heart before, 
Laden till it could bear no more, 
Has seen a heavenward light that smiled, 
And knew it placed there by a child, — 
A long-gone child, whose anxious face 
Gazed toward them down the deeps of space, 
Longing for the loved to come 
To the quiet of that home. 

T. Buchanan Read. 



April 5. 

The spring is in the air; 
For, with the first warm kisses of the rain, 
The winter's icy sorrow breaks to tears; 

And the brown thrushes mate ; and with bright eyes the 
rabbit peers 
From the dark warren where the fir-cones lie, 

And treads one snowdrop underfoot, and runs 
Over the mossy knoll; and black-birds fly 

Across our path at evening and the sun's. 
Stay longer with us ! Ah, how good to see 
Grass-girdled Spring in all her joy of laughing greenery ! 

Oscar Wilde. 



I am thinking of the lilac-trees 
That shook their purple plumes, 

And, when the sash was open, 
Shed fragrance through the rooms. 

Mrs. Stephens. 



April 6. 

Oh, this April weather ! 

Breath of balm and snow ; 
June and March together 

In an hour or so. 

Something altogether 

Charming in it too; 
Not the worst of weather 

When the sun shines through. 

Taken altogether, 

It's the counterpart, 

This queer April weather, 

Of — yourself, sweetheart. 

Nora Perry, 



If you would create something, you must be something. 

Goethe. 



April 7. 

The April winds are magical, 
And thrill our tuneful frames. 

7?. W. Emerson. 



To the giver shall be given. 
If thou wouldst walk in light, 
Make other spirits bright : 
Who, seeking for himself alone, ever entered heaven? 
In blessing we are blest, 
In labor find our rest; 
If we bend not to the world's work, heart and hand and 
brain, 
We have lived our life in vain. 

Caroline Seymour. 



April 8. 

"Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of right- 
eousness arise with healing in his wings." 



He sendeth sun, he sendeth showei ; 
Alike they're needful for the flower: 
And joys and tears alike are sent 
To give the soul fit nourishment. 
As comes to me or cloud or sun, 
Father, thy will, not mine, be done ! 

S. F. Adams, 



A straight line is the shortest in morals as in mathe- 
matics. 

Maria Edgeworth. 



April 9. 

Like a blind spinner in the sun 

I tread my days. 
I know that all the threads will run 

Appointed ways. 
I know each day will bring its task; 

And, being blind, no more I ask. 

Helen Hunt. 



Lord, all thy works are lessons. Each contains 

Some emblem of man's all-containing soul : 
Shall he make fruitless all thy glorious pains, 

Delving within thy grace an eyeless mole? 
Make me the least of thy Do dona grove ; 

Cause me some message of thy truth to bring; 
Speak but a word through me, nor let thy love 

Among my boughs disdain to perch and sing. 

J. R. Lowell. 



April lO. 



As thy days thy strength shall be : 
This should be enough for thee ; 
He who knows thy frame will spare 
Burdens more than thou canst bear. 

Francis Ridley HavergaL 



" But it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall 
be light." 



The vault is blue, 
Without a cloud; and white without a speck 
The dazzling splendor of the scene below. 

Cowper. 



April 11. 

Earth is a wintry clod ; 
But spring wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes 
Over its breast to waken it : rare verdure 
Buds tenderly upon rough banks, between 
The withered tree-roots and the cracks of frost, 
Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face. 
The grass grows bright ; the boughs are swoFn with blooms, 
Like chrysalids impatient for the air; 
The shining dors are busy; beetles run 
Along the furrows ; ants make their ado ; 
Above, birds fly in merry flocks, — the lark 
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy; 
Savage creatures seek their loves in wood and plain; 
And God renews his ancient rapture. 

Robert Browning. 



April 12. 

Again has come the spring-time, 

With the crocus's golden bloom, 
With the smell of the fresh-turned earth-mould, 

And the violet's perfume. 

S. Longfellow. 



Oh ! teach me, thou forest, to testify glad, 
As in autumn the gloom of thy yellowing leaf, 

That my spring cometh back after winter, the seed; 
That my tree gleameth green after mournfulness brief; 

The roots of my tree stand deep, strong, and divine 

In eternity's summer : oh, why, then, repine ! 

From the Danish. 



What a pity that wrinkles should not be all under our 

heels instead of on our faces ! It would be a much 

better arrangement. 

Ninon de VEnclos. 



April 13. 



These two things, contradictory as they may seem, 
must go together, — manly dependence and manly inde- 
pendence, manly reliance and manly self-reliance. 

Wordsworth. 



I want a sofa, as I want a friend, upon which I can 
repose familiarly. If I can't have intimate terms and 
freedom with one and the other, they are of no good. 

Thackeray. 



True friends visit us in prosperity only when invited, 
but in adversity they come without invitation. 

Theophrastus. 



April 14. 



DAY BY DAY. 

Why do we heap huge mounds of years 

Before us and behind, 
And scorn the little days that pass 

Like angels on the wind? 

Each turning round a small, sweet face, 

As beautiful as near; 
Because it has so small a face, 

We will not see it clear. 



And so it turns from us, and goes 

Away in sad disdain : 
Though we would give our lives for it, 

It never comes again. 

Yet every day has its dawn, 

Its noontide, and its eve : 
Live while we live, giving God thanks, — 

He will not let us grieve. 

Mrs. Crazk. 



April 15. 

When you lie down, close your eyes with a short prayer, 
commit yourself into the hands of your faithful Creator; 
and, when you have done, trust him with yourself, as you 
must do when you are dying. 

Jeremy Taylor. 



Religion gives part of its reward in hand, — the present 
comfort of having done our duty; and, for the rest, it 
offers us the best security that heaven can give. 

Tillotson. 



Whether religion be true or false, it must be necessa- 
rily granted to be the only wise principle and safe 
hypothesis for a man to live and die by. 

Tillotson. 



April 16. 



Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed. 
Be any thing else, and you will be ten thousand times 
worse than nothing. 



Sydney Smith, 



Life, believe, is not a dream 

So dark as sages say : 
Oft a little morning rain 

Foretells a pleasant day. 
Sometimes there are clouds of gloom, 

But these are transient all : 
If the shower will make the roses bloom, 

Oh! why lament its fall? 
Rapidly, merrily, 

Life's sunny hours flit by, 

Gratefully, cheerily, 

Enjoy them as they fly. 

Currer Bell. 
(Charlotte BrontL) 



April 17. 

Be cheerful, no matter what reverse obstruct your path- 
way, or what plagues follow you in your trail to annoy 
you. Ask yourself what is to be gained by looking or 
feeling sad when troubles throng around you, or how your 
condition is to be alleviated by abandoning yourself to 
despondency. ... Be cheerful. 

Arthur Helps, 



CHEERFULNESS. 

Some wise man once remarked, that he would rather 
be born possessed of a cheerful and contented disposition 
than heir to twenty thousand a year. He was right in 
his choice : for a cheerful nature, like a Claude Lorraine 
glass, tinges all objects with sunlight; while a discontented 
disposition makes itself miserable everywhere, and in the 
greatest prosperity can sing, — 

" If it's fine to-day, it will rain to-morrow ; 
So let us all be unhappy together." 



ARBUTUS. 

Oft have I walked these woodland paths 
Without the blest foreknowing 

That underneath the withered leaves 
The fairest flowers were growing. 

O prophet soul ! with lips of bloom, 

Outvying, in your beauty, 
The pearly tints of ocean shells, 

Ye teach me faith and duty. 

Walk life's dark paths, they seem to say, 
With Love's divine foreknowing, 

That where man sees but withered leaves, 
God sees the sweet flowers growing. 

Leighton. 



Hard work will best uncertain fortune mend. 



April 19. 



When on your home falls unforeseen distress, 
Half-clothed come neighbors : kinsmen stay to dress. 

Hesiod, 



One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say 
a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish 
we had rather left unsaid; nor can there any thing be 
well more contrary to the ends for which people meet 
together than to part unsatisfied with each other or them- 
selves. 

Swift. 



You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you 
destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with 
you by using them ill. 

Sir W. Temple. 



April 20. 



Health is coming into fashion. Now that the country 
is becoming safe, we must again turn our attention to the 
health of our girls. Unless they are healthy, the country 
is not safe. The fate of our institutions may hang on the 
precise temperament which our next president shall have 
inherited from his mother. 

T, W. Higginson. 



All discouragement is of the Devil. When Trust comes 
in, Worry goes out. 



Every tear is answered by a blossom; 
Every sigh with songs and laughter blent; 
Apple-blooms upon the breezes toss them; 
April knows her own, and is content. 

Susan Coolidge. 



April 21. 



THE WOOD-ANEMONE. 

Thou gentle flower, 
That first doth greet the heightening sun, 
Anemone, thou modest one, 
Who taught thee that the winter's course is run, 

While storms still lower ? 
Thou, trusting nature's word, doth come 
Ere birds are mated, or the hum 
Of bees returns the spotted picker's drum. 

The tingeing blush 
That touches on thy petals fair, 
When blows the south-wind's amorous air, 
Is like a maiden's face. Thou dost not bear 

The hot-breathed rush 
Of June, but on thy slender stalk 
Soon diest, while thy leaves unlock 
Their fingers, prayer-like, drooping on the rock. 

Thy lessons fall 
Like seeds of good upon my soul, 
To teach me faith in God, to pole 
My scattered thoughts to one more perfect whole, 

Pervading all. 
Sweet emblem, full of trust, and chaste, 
I love thy tinted bell, so graced 
With springtime's life amid the winter's waste. 

Charles Hall Perry, 



April 22. 



"That ye sorrow not, even as others which have no 
hope." 



Grief, it is truly said, is sacred ; but grief brought for- 
ward promiscuously, harped upon, condoled over, made 
the staple of conversation, becomes rapidly profane. 

Apply healing to other minds diseased, and you will not 
fail to heal your own. The law of impenetrability obtains 
in mind as well as in matter. Sorrow cannot wholly fill 
the heart that is occupied with others 7 welfare. 

Constant melancholy, furthermore, is constant rebellion. 

Gail Hamilton, 



Sorrow is not selfish, but many persons are in sorrow 
entirely selfish. It makes them so important in their own 
eyes, that they seem to have a claim on all that people 

can do for them. 

George Macdonald. 



April 23. 



A gush of bird-song, a patter of dew, 
A cloud, and a rainbow's warning, 

Suddenly sunshine and perfect blue, — 
An April day in the morning. 

Harriet Prescott Sfiofford. 

The orchards all a-flutter with pink, 

Robins' twitter, and wild bees 7 humming, 

Break the song with a thrill to think 

How sweet is life when summer is coming. 
Harriet Prescott Spofford. 



Rare benevolence, the minister of God. 

Carlyle, 

If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in 

frankness. 

Montaigne. 



April 24. 



Cicero was at dinner when an ancient lady said she 
was but forty. One that sat by rounded him in the ear, 
"She is far more, — out of the question.' 7 Cicero an- 
swered, " I must believe her, for I have heard her say so 

any time these ten years.' ' 

Lord Bacon, 



I do not call a healthy young man, cheerful in his 

mind and vigorous in his arms, — I cannot call such a 

man, — poor. I cannot pity my kind as a kind, merely 

because they are men. This affected pity only tends to 

dissatisfy them with their condition, and to teach them 

to seek resources where no resources are to be found, — in 

something else than their own industry and frugality and 

sobriety. 

Burke. 



April 25. 



REWARD OF ENDEAVOR. 

What hast thou for thy scattered seed, 

O sower of the plain? 
Where are the many gathered sheaves 

Thy hope shall bring again? 
"The only record of my work 

Lies in the buried grain." 

What is the harvest of thy saints, 

O God ! who dost abide ? 

p 

Where grow the garlands of thy chiefs, 

In blood and sorrow dyed? 
What have thy servants for their pains? 

"This only — to have tried." 

Julia Ward Howe, 



Atheism is the suicide of the soul. 



April 26. 



Why not take life with cheerful trust, 

With faith in the strength of weakness? 
The slenderest daisy rears its head 
With courage and with meekness. 
A sunny face 
Hath holy grace, 
To woo the sun forever. 

Mary M. Dodge. 



A man too busy to take care of his health is like a 
mechanic too busy to take care of his tools. 



Happiness is where it is found, and seldom where it is 
sought. 



April 27. 

Poor heart, above thy field of sorrow sighing 
For smitten faith, and hope untimely slain, 

Leave thou the soil whereon thy dead are lying 
To the soft sunlight and the cleansing rain. 

Love works in silence, hiding all the traces 
Of bitter conflict on the trampled sod. 

And time shall show thee all life's battle-places, 

Veiled by the hand of God. 

/. L. Cos ham. 



To divert, at any time, a troublesome fancy, run to thy 
books. They presently fix thee to them, and drive the 
other out of thy thoughts. They always receive thee with 
the same kindness. 



Thomas Fuller. 



To confide too much is to put your lemon into another 

man's squeezer. 

Bovee. 



April 28. 



Act and speak to your servants as you would wish 
others to do to you if you were a servant. 

Dionysius the Carthusian, 



I always fancy I can hear the wheels clicking in a 
calculator's brain. The power of dealing with numbers 
is a kind of "detached-lever" arrangement, which may 
be put into a mighty poor watch. 

Holmes, 



There is a day of sunny rest 

For every dark and troubled night; 

And grief may bide an evening guest, 
But joy shall come with early light. 

Bryant, 



Ever with loss the putter-off contends. 



April 29. 



How many are familiar with the language of the cross, 
with the terms sacrifice, self-denial, and self- crucifixion, 
who know nothing practically of what they signify ! The 
cross is made an ornament; it is wrought in gold and 
jewels; it hangs in pictures in elegant halls, or tips the 
costly church-spire. And yet how far is all this from true 
evangelical cross-bearing, or the meek endurance of divine 
chastisement, the humble and faithful performance of pain- 
ful duty. Dr. Kirk. 

We love our dead, and hold their memories dear; 

But living love is sweeter than regret: 
God's ways are just; and, though they seem severe, 

He can give back with blessings greater yet 
Than we have lost. He chastens for some good 
That in our weakness is not understood. 

Barton Grey. 



April 30. 



O fair mid-spring, besung so oft and oft, 
How can I praise thy loveliness enow? 

The sun that burns not, and thy breezes soft 
That o'er the blossoms of the orchard blow, 
The thousand things that 'neath the young leaves grow, 

The hopes and chances of the growing year, 

Winter forgotten long, and summer near. 

William Morris. 



It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that 
while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is noth- 
ing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and 
good humor. Dickens. 



Tis impious in a good man to be sad. 

Edward Young. 



May 1. 

Now must these men be glad a little while 
That they had lived to see May once more smile. 

Chaucer. 



Then came faire May, the fayrest mayd on ground, 

Deckt all with dainties of her season's pryde, 
And, throwing flowres out of her lap around, 

Upon two brethren's shoulders she did ride, 
The twinnes of Leda, which on eyther side 

Supported her like to their soveraine queene. 
Lord ! how all creatures laught when they her spide, 

And leapt and daunct as they had ravisht beene ! 

And Cupid selfe about her fluttred all in greene. 

Spenser, 



May 2, 

May, thou month of rosy beauty, 
Month when pleasure is a duty, 
Month of bees and month of flowers, 
Month of blossom-laden bowers, 
Month of little hands with daisies, 
Lover's love, and poet's praises, 
May's the month that's laughing now. 
I no sooner write the word, 
Than it seems as though it heard, 
And looks up, and laughs at me, 
Like a sweet face rosily 
Flushing from the papers white; 
Like a bride that knows her power, 
Startled in a summer bower. 

Leigh Hunt 



May 3. 

THE VOICE OF THE GRASS. 

Here I come, creeping, smiling everywhere; 
All round the open door, 
Where sit the aged poor; 

Here where the children play, 

In the bright and merry May, 

I come creeping, creeping everywhere. 

Here I come creeping, creeping everywhere : 
My humble song of praise 
Most joyfully I raise 

To Him at whose command 
I beautify the land, 
Creeping, silently creeping everywhere. 

Sarah Roberts, 



May 4. 

So, then, the year is repeating its old story again. We 
are come once more, thank God ! to its most charming 
chapter. The violets and the Mayflowers are its inscrip- 
tions or vignettes. It always makes a pleasant impression 
on us when we open again at these pages of the book 
Of life. Goethe. 



This season of the year touches my spirit always with a 
sense of newness, of strangeness, of resurrection. It shoots 
boyhood again into the blood of middle age. That ten- 
der greening of the black bough and the red field; that 
coming again of the new-old flowers ; that rebirth of love 
in all the family of birds, with cooings and caressings, 
and building of nests in wood and brake ; that strange 
glory of sunshine in the air; that stirring of life in the 
green mould, making even churchyards beautiful, — seems 
like the creation of a new world. 

Alexander Smith. 



May 5. 

QUARRELLING. 

If any thing in the world will make a man feel badly, 
except pinching his fingers in the crack of a door, it is 
a quarrel. No man fails to think less of himself after 
than he did before : it degrades him in the eyes of 
others, and, what is worse, tends to blunt his sensibilities, 
and increases his irritability. The truth is, that the more 
peaceably and quietly we get on, the better for our neigh- 
bors. In nine cases out of ten, the better course is, if 
the man cheats you, to quit dealing with him ; if he 
slanders you, take care to live down his slanders. Let 
such persons alone, for there is nothing better than this 
way of dealing with those who injure us. 

Hilton. 



I think the pale blue clouds of May 
Drop down, and turn to flowers. 



T. B. Aldrick. 



May 6. 

"THIS, TOO, SHALL PASS AWAY." 

An Eastern monarch commanded his minister to furnish 
a motto that should cheer in adversity, and prevent excessive 
joy in prosperity. He gave the monarch for his signet : 
"This, too, shall pass away." How greatly would such a 
thought console us in sorrow, or restrain us in joy. Every 
state of feeling or suffering, of hope or despair, will pass 

away in this life. 

John Forster. 



The longer I live, the more I think religion to consist in 
candor, kindness, forbearance, hoping for the best. 

Bela B. Edwards. 



What avails a life of fretting? 

y. G. Whittier. 



May 7. 

O May, sweet-voiced one, going thus before, 
For ever June may pour her warm red wine 
Of life and passion, — sweeter days are thine. 

Helen Hunt 



Yet, with a heart that's ever kind, 

A gentle spirit gay, 
YouVe spring perennial in your mind, 

And round you make a May. 

Thackeray, 



And 'tis my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes. 

Wordsworth, 



May 8. 



ARBUTUS. 



I wandered lonely where the pine-trees made 
Against the bitter east their barricade; 

And, guided by its sweet 
Perfume, I found, within a narrow dell, 

Amid dry moss and dead leaves at my feet, 
The trailing spring flower, tinted like a shell. 

And, bending o'er it not irreverent, 

I thought of lives thus lowly clogged and pent, 

Which yet found room, 
Through daily cumberings of deep decay and death, 

To give to heaven the sweetness of their breath, 
And to earth the beauty of their bloom. 

John G. Whittier. 



May 9. 

A DAY OF SUNSHINE. 

O gift of God ! O perfect day : 
Whereon shall no man work, but play; 
Whereon it is enough for me, 
Not to be doing, but to be ! 

Blow, winds ! and waft through all the rooms 
The snow-flakes of the cherry-blooms ! 
Blow, winds ! and bend within my reach 
The fiery blossoms of the peach ! 

O Life and Love ! O happy throng 
Of thoughts, whose only speech is song ! 
O heart of man ! canst thou not be 
Blithe as the air is, and as free ? 

Longfellow* 



May 10. 



Lessons to be learned from the humility and cheerful- 
ness of the grass : Its humility, in that it seems created 
only for lowest service, — appointed to be trodden on and 
fed upon. Its cheerfulness, in that it seems to exult under 
all kinds of violence and suffering. You roll it, and it is 
stronger the next day; you mow it, and it multiplies its 
shoots as if it were grateful ; you tread upon it, and it only 
sends up richer perfume. 

Now, these two characters — of humility, and joy under 
trial — are exactly those which most definitely distinguish 
the Christian from the Pagan spirit. 

Ruskin, 



In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is 
calm and pleasant, it were an injur}' and sullenness 
against Nature, not to go out and see her riches, and 
partake of her rejoicing with heaven and earth. 

Milton. 



May 11. 

May was called by our Saxon ancestors Tri-milki, be- 
cause in that month they began to milk their kine three 
times in the day. 



The May festival has come down to us from the Druids, 
who themselves had it from India. 



Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may 

swell. 

Beecher, 



The shy little Mayflower weaves her nest; 

But the south wind sighs o'er the fragrant loam, 

And betrays the path to her woodland home. 

S. H. Whitman. 



May 12. 



MORAL COURAGE. 

Sydney Smith, in his work on moral philosophy, speaks 
in this wise of what men lose for want of a little moral 
courage, or independence of mind : " A great deal of talent 
is lost in the world for the want of a little courage. The 
fact is, that to do any thing in this world worth doing, we 
must not stand back shivering, and thinking of the cold 
and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well 
as we can. It will not do to be perpetually calculating 
tasks, and adjusting nice chances • it did very well before 
the flood, where a man could consult his friends upon an 
intended publication for an hundred and fifty years, and 
then live to see its success afterwards : but at present, 
a man waits and doubts and hesitates, and consults his 
brother and his uncle and particular friends, till one fine 
day he finds that he is sixty years of age ; that he has 
lost so much time in consulting his first cousin and par- 
ticular friends, that he has no more time to follow their 
advice." 



May 13. 



Sweet May hath come to love us; 

Flowers, trees, their blossoms don ; 
And, through the blue heavens above us, 

The very clouds move on. 



Heine, 



Ah ! human kindness, human love, — 

To few who seek denied, — 

Too late we learn to prize above 

The whole round world beside. 

Whittier. 



It is prodigious the quantity of good that may be done 
by one man if he will make a business of it. 



Franklin. 



May 14. 



Take thou no scorn 

Of Fiction born, 

Fair Fiction's muse to woo : 

Old Homer's theme 

Was but a dream, 

Himself a fiction too. 

Sir Walter Scott. 



The daffodil is our doorside queen : 

She pushes up the sward already, 

To spot with sunshine the early green. 

Bryant. 



The world deals good-naturedly with good-natured peo- 
ple ; and I never knew a sulky misanthropist who quarrelled 
with it, but it was he, and not it, that was in the wrong. 

Thackeray. 



May 15. 



Be thankful for the gifts 

That bounteous Heaven bestows : 
Enjoy them while they last, 

Nor mourn the fading rose. 
The world would weary 

Did night not follow day, 
And Spring herself would perish 

If every month were May. 

Charles Mackay. 



First Swell. — "I never did like 'May/ — not nearly so 
pretty as 'Mary.* Wonder they don't change the name 
of the month to ' Mary/ " 

Second Swell. — " Clevaw ideaw, bah Jove ! Make awy- 

staws good to June, you know ! " 

Exchange. 



TO THE DANDELION. 

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, 

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 

First pledge of blithesome May, 

Thou teachest me to deem 

More sacredly of every human heart, 

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam 

Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, 

Did we but pay the love we owe, 

And with a child's undoubting wisdom look 

On all these living pages of God's book. 

Lowell. 



The arbutus is now open everywhere in the woods 
and groves. How pleasant it is to meet the same flowers 
year after year. 

Miss Cooper. 



May 17. 



O evil day ! if T were sullen 
While the earth herself is adorning 
This sweet May morning, 
And the children are pulling, 
On every side, 

In a thousand valleys far and wide, 
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, 
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm. 

Wordsworth, 



If solid happiness we prize, 
Within our breast this jewel lies; 
And they are fools who roam. 
The world has nothing to bestow: 
From our own selves our joys must flow. 

Anon. 



May 18. 



In the month of May, apple-trees go a-courting. Love 
is evermore father of poetry. For an apple-tree in full 
blossom is like a message sent fresh from heaven to earth, 
of purity and beauty. It is the high noon just now, on 
this eighteenth day of May, with the apple-trees ! In 
the month of May, the very flower-month of the year, 
the crown and glory of all is the apple-tree. 

In my calendar hereafter, I do ordain that the name 
of this month be changed. Instead of May, let it hence- 
forth be called "the month of the apple-blossom." 

Beecher. 



A propensity to hope and joy is real riches; one to 
fear and sorrow, real poverty. 

Hzime. 



May 19. 



It is the crushed grape that gives out the blood-red 
ine. It 
melodies. 



wine. It is the suffering soul that breathes the sweetest 



Gail Hamilton, 



God's ways seem dark; but, soon or late, 
They touch the shining hills of day : 
The evil cannot brook delay, 

The good can well afford to wait. 

John G. WJiittier. 



Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to 
celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns; for, 
in ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he enters upon 
the heritage of a diviner life. 

Plutarch. 



May 20. 



I once remember to have heard a woman say, when 
I was passing down a lane, — a child stood crying at the 
door, and I heard her calling out, — "Ah! you are crying 
for nothing : I will give you something to cry for." 

It is often so with God's children. They get crying 
for nothing. They have a miserable disposition, or a 
turn of mind always making miseries for themselves ; and 
thus they have something to cry for. Their peace is 
disturbed, some sad trouble comes, God hides his face, 
and then they lose their peace. But keep on singing, 
even when the sun does not keep on shining; keep a 
song for all weathers ; get a joy that will stand clouds 
and storms ; and then, when you know how always to 
rejoice, you shall have this peace. 

Rev. C. H. Spurgeon. 



May 21. 

Better and sweeter than health or friends or money 
or fame or ease or prosperity is the adorable will of 
our God. It gilds the darkest hours with a divine halo, 
and sheds brightest sunshine on the gloomiest paths. 
He always reigns who has made it his kingdom, and 
nothing can go amiss to him. The first step you must 
take in order to enter into the life hid with Christ in 
God, is that of entire consecration. I cannot have you 
look at it as a hard and stern demand. You must do it 
gladly, thankfully, enthusiastically. You must go in on 
what I call the privilege side of consecration; and I can 
assure you, from a blessed experience, that you will find 
it the happiest place you have ever entered yet. 

" H. W. S." 



If we had but more faith, we should have less care. 

Rev, M. Henry, 



May 22. 



A VIOLET. 

God does not send us strange flowers every year. 
When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places, 
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces. 

The violet is here. 

So after the death- winter it must be, 

God will not put strange signs in the heavenly places : 

The old love shall look out from the old faces. 

Veilchen ! I shall have thee ! 

Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney,, 



If we stand boggling at imaginary evils, let us never 

blame a horse for starting at a shadow. 

V Estrange, 



When you come into the house, do you bring sunshine 
with you? 



Gail Hamilton. 



May 23. 



"I knew her in her brightness, a creature full of glee 
As the dancing waves that sparkle on the placid sum- 
mer sea : 
To her the world was sunshine, and peace was on her 

breast ; 
For ' Contentment ' was her motto, and a ' Heartsease ' 
was her crest. 

"Yet deem not for a moment that her life was free from 

care : 
She shared the storms and sorrows that others sigh to 

bear; 
But she met earth's tempests meekly in the hope of 

heaven's rest ; 
She gave not up her motto, nor cast away her crest. 

"Alas ! the many frowning brows and eyes that speak 

of woe, 
And hearts that turn reprovingly from every chastening 

blow; 
But our paths might all be smoother, and our hearts 

would all be blest, 
With ' Contentment ' for our motto and a i Heartsease* 

for our crest." 



May 24. 



Indeed, I almost doubt whether the head of a family 
does not do more mischief if he is unsympathetic than 
even if he were unjust. 

Arthur Helps, 



Be at least as polite to father, mother, child, as to 

others ; for they are more important to you than any 

other. 

Rochefoucauld. 



His text was, "What dost thou hear, Elijah?" He 
divided it into two heads. "First, my brethren," said 
he, " let us consider what Elijah did hear ; and, secondly, 
what he didn't hear." 



May 25. 



'Twas ever thus from childhood's hour, 

My fondest hopes would not decay: 
I never loved a tree or flower 

Which was the first to fade away ! 
I never nursed a dear gazelle, 

But I was given a paroquet : 
How I did nurse him if unwell ! 

He's imbecile, but lingers yet. 
He's green, with an enchanting tuft; 

He melts me with his small black eye; 
He'd look inimitable stuffed, 

And knows it, — but he will not die. 
And then I bought a dog, — a queen ! 

Ah, Tiny ! dear departing pug ! 
She lives, but she is past sixteen, 

And scarce can crawl across the rug. 
I loved her beautiful and kind, 

Delighted in her pert bow-wow; 
But now she snaps if you don't mind : 

'Twere lunacy to love her now. 

C. S. Calverly. 



May 26. 



We prate of life's illusive dyes, 

And yet fond hope misleads us : 
We all believe we near the prize, 

Till some fresh dupe succeeds us. 
And yet, though life's a riddle, though 

No clerk has yet explained it, 
I still can hope ; for well I know 

That Love has thus ordained it. 

Frederick Locker, 



Dost thou love life ? Then, do not squander time ; for 
that is the stuff life is made of. 

Franklin. 



Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising 
every time we fall. 

Confucius. 



May 27. 

w : 

THE LUMINOUS TRUTH. 

"Who will give me his heart/ 7 said God, 
"My love he shall find." 
With that speech a resplendent sun fell into my mind. 

Oriental Poetry. 



God asks not, " To what sect did he belong ? " 
But, " Did he do the right, or love the wrong ? " 

Oriental Poetry. 



Very rarely indeed do we receive any good gift out of 
the spiritual treasures of our God in ripe completeness at 
the first. It would be as difficult to put a full-grown grace 
into the soul as it is to transplant a full-grown tree. 

Sarah F. Smiley. 



May 28. 



You see no light beyond the stars, 
No hope of lasting joys to come? 

I feel, thank God ! no narrow bars 
Between me and my final home. 

Hence with your cold, sepulchral bans, — 
The vassal doubts unfaith has given ! 

My childhood's heart within the man's 
Still whispers to me, "Trust in Heaven ! " 

James T, Fields, 



If you wish to get on, you must do as you would to 
get in through a crowd to a gate all are equally anxious 
to reach. Hold your ground, and push hard. To stand 
still is to give up your hope. 

Lady Mary Montagu, 



May 29. 



ON ATHEISM. 

"I had rather/' says Sir Francis Bacon, "believe all the 
fables in the Legend, the Talmud, and the Koran, than 
that this universal frame is without a mind. God never 
wrought miracles to convince atheists, because his ordi- 
nary works are sufficient to convince them. It is true that 
a little philosophy inclineth men's minds to atheism, but 
depth in philosophy bringeth them back to religion : for, 
while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scat- 
tered, it may sometimes rest on them, and go no farther; 
but, when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and 
linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity." 



To do so no more is the truest repentance. 

Luther. 



May 30. 



©ecoration ©agu 

Take from your flag its fold of gloom, 
And let it float undimmed above, 

Till over all our vales shall bloom 
The sacred colors that we love. 

Though by the places where they fell, 
The places that are sacred ground, 

Death, like a sullen sentinel, 
Paces his everlasting round, 

Not there, but risen, redeemed, they go 
Where all the paths are sweet with flowers : 

They fought to give us peace ; and, lo ! 
They gained a better peace than ours. 

Phcebe Cary. 



May 31. 



I have read in old tales of the buried past, 
Of two armies which met on the battle-plain, 

Roman and Cymbric, in numbers vast, 

How they fought till the field was heaped with slain, 

And how through all day the crimson tide 

Of battle favored the Cymbric side, 
Though their dead bestrewed the plain, 

Till at length, from out of the clouded skies, 

A sunbeam darted across the world, 
Blinding the Cymbrian warriors' eyes ; 

And backward their conquering hosts were hurled. 
And thus in the record of years is told 
How a sunbeam, back in the days of old, 

Decided the fate of the world. 

AT. G. Shepherd. 



June 1. 

Ah, June ! my lovely lass, 

Sweetheart, dost thou not see 
I stay to watch thee pass? 

What hast thou brought to me? 

Thy mystic ministries 

Of glorious far skies, 
Thy wild-rose sermons, sweet, 
Like dreams profound and fleet, 

Thy woodland harmony, 

Thou givest me. 

The vision that can see, 

The loving will to learn, 
How fair thy skies may be, 
What in thy roses burn, 
Thy secret harmonies, — 
Ah, give me these ! 

Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. 



June 2. 

They come ! the merry summer months of beauty, song, 
and flowers: 

They come ! the gladsome months that bring thick leafi- 
ness to bowers. 

Up, up, my heart ! and walk abroad ; fling cark and care 
aside ; 

Seek silent hills, or rest thyself where peaceful waters glide ; 

Or, underneath the shadow vast of patriarchal tree, 

Scan through its leaves the cloudless sky in rapt tranquil- 
lity. 

William Motherwell. 



Cheerfulness is the daughter of employment; and I 
have known a man to come home in high spirits from a 
funeral, merely because he had the management of it. 

Bishop Home. 



June 3. 

Perhaps the most miserable people in the world are 

the very careful ones. You that are so anxious about 

what shall happen on the morrow, that you cannot enjoy 

the pleasures of to-day; you who have such a peculiar 

cast of mind that you suspect every star to be a comet, 

and imagine that there must be a volcano in every grassy 

mead; you that are more attracted by the spots in the sun 

than by the sun himself, and more amazed by one sear 

leaf upon the tree than by all the verdure of the woods ; 

you that make more of your troubles than you do of your* 

joys, — I say, I think you belong to the most miserable 

of men. 

Rev. C. H. Spurge on. 

Sorrows will not last forever, 

Brighter times will come again : 

Joy our every grief succeeding, 

As the sunshine after rain. 

A7ion. 



June 4. 

Evil itself has its bright, or at any rate, its redeeming side, 
probably is but the fugitive requisite of some everlasting 
good, and assuredly in the mean time, and in a thousand 
obvious instances, is the admonisher, the producer, the 
increaser, nay, the very adorner and splendid investitor, of 
good ; it is the pain that prevents a worse, the storm that 
diffuses health, the plague that sweetens sleep, the discord 
that enriches harmonies, the calamity that tests affections, 
the victory and the crown of patience, the enraptures of 
the embraces of joy. 

Leigh Hn?it. 



The morning-glory's blossoming 

Will soon be coming round : 

We see their rows of heart-shaped leaves 

Upspringing from the ground. 

Mrs. Lowell, 



June 5. 

MISCHIEF-MAKERS. 

Oh ! could there in this world be found 
Some little spot of happy ground, 

Without the village tattling, 
How doubly blest that spot would be, 
Where all might dwell in liberty, 
Free from the bitter misery 

Of gossips' endless prattling ! 

Oh, that the mischief-making crew 
Were all reduced to one or two, 
And they were painted red or blue, 
That every one might know them ! 



Holmes, 



The folks that on the first of May 

Wore winter-coats and hose, 

Began to say, the first of June, 

" Good Lord ! how hot it grows ! " 

Holmes. 



June 6. 

Welcome, Disappointment ! Thy hand is cold and hard, 
but it is the hand of a friend. Thy voice is stern and harsh, 
but it is the voice of a friend. Oh, there is something sub- 
lime in calm endurance, something sublime in the resolute, 
fixed purpose of suffering without complaining, which makes 
disappointment oftentimes better than success ! 

Longfellow, 



The deed divine 
Is written in characters of gold, 
That never shall grow old, 
But through all ages 

Burn and shine 

With soft effulgence. 

Longfellow* 



June 7. 

There is no denying, that, if spring is " some," June is 

summer. 

Artemiis Ward, 



Giver of glowing light, 
Though but a, god of other days, 
The kings and sages 
Of wiser ages 
Still live and gladden in thy genial rays. 

Father of rosy day, 
No more thy clouds of incense rise ; 
But waking flowers 
At morning hours 
Give out their sweets to meet thee in the skies. 

Thomas Hood, 



June 8. 



Lying among the daisies, 

Under the fair blue skies, 
I find in the life about me 

A minute paradise. 
I know not the tender grasses 

By the names they have in books, 
But I find them sweet companions 

When away in shady nooks 
I hide from the world about me, 

And the wrangle of earthly seers, 
To dwell on the countless lessons 

Which lie in their tender spears. 
Each leaf a microcosm 

Singing of God's dear love, 
Each flower a tiny picture 

Of the stars that burn above ; 
Each blade in its graceful curving 

One of God's wondrous tomes, 
And in the green about me 

A multitude of homes. 

D. Chauncev Brewer. 



June 9. 



CONTENT. 



Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers? 

O sweet content ! 
Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed? 

O punishment ! 
Dost laugh to see how fools are vexed 
To add to golden numbers golden numbers? 
O sweet content ! O sweet, O sweet content ! 
Work apace, apace, apace, apace ; 
Honest labor bears a lovely face. 
He that patiently want's burden bears, 
No burden bears, but is a king, a king : 
O sweet content ! O sweet, O sweet content ! 

Thomas Dekker. 



But we will take 
Our toils upon us nobly ! Strength is born 
In the deep silence of long-suffering hearts ; 
Not amidst joy ! 



Mrs. Hemans. 



June lO. 



Light of light, enlighten me, 
Now anew the day is dawning; 

Sun of grace, the shadows flee, 

Brighten thou my sabbath morning; 

With thy joyous sunshine blest, 

Happy is my day of rest. 

B. Schmolck. 



Such a beautiful content, 
Such a charmed time, is sent 
For all souls to say that June 
Is a glimpse of God's high noon. 

Julia W, Howe. 



June ! June ! June ! 

Low croon 
The brown bees in the clover; 
Sweet ! sweet ! sweet ! 

Repeat 

The robins, nested over. 

Avis Grey. 



June 11. 

A garden so well watered before morn 
Is hotly up, that not the swart sun's blaze 
Down-beating with unmitigated rays, 
Nor arid winds from scorching places borne, 
Shall quite prevail to make it bare and shorn 
Of its green beauty, — shall not quite prevail 
That all its morning freshness shall exhale 
Till evening and the evening dews return, — 
A blessing such as this our hearts might reap, 
The freshness of the garden they might share, 
Through the long day a heavenly freshness keep, 
If, knowing how the day and the day's glare 
Must beat upon them, we would largely steep 
And water them betimes with dews of prayer. 

Trench. 



June 12. 

If gilt were only gold, or sugar-candy common sense, 
what a fine thing our society would be ! Had we recently 
arrived from the moon, we might, upon hearing that we 
were to meet the "best society," have fancied that we were 
about to enjoy an opportunity not to be overvalued ; but, 
unfortunately, we were not so freshly arrived. 

George W. Curtis, 



To have the tongue cut out, and to be seated, deaf 
and dumb, in a corner, were preferable to his condition 
who cannot govern his tongue. 



Sadu 



Alas for heedless hearts and blinded sense ! 

With what faint welcome and what meagre fare, 
What mean subjections and small recompense, 

We entertain our angels unaware ! 

Elizabeth A. Allen. 



June 13. 



"Why, sir/' said Mr. Squeers, "I'm pretty well; so's the 
family, and so's the boys, except for a sort of rash as is 
a-running through the school, and rather puts 'em off their 
feed. But it's a ill wind as blows no good to nobody : 
that's what I always say when them lads has a wisitation. 
The world is chock-full of wisitations. A wisitation, sir, 
is the lot of mortality." 

Dickens, 



Sometimes I think it's pretty dangerous living anywheres. 

Harper 's Drawer, 



Then said his lordship, "Well, God mend all ! " — " Nay, 
Donald, we must help him to mend it," said the other. 

Quoted by Carlyle. 



June 14. 



That earth's no paradise 
We know as well as you. 
What then ? you dark, dull soul ! 
Suppose in the deep blue sky 
There never was seen a star; 
Suppose the bounteous earth 
No more brought forth a flower, 
And trees were barren sticks, 
Like you, my worthy friend ! 
Go away, grumbler ! go ! 
And, ere you talk again 
Of the utter misery 
And darkness of the world, 
Be grateful for the flowers; 
And if your purblind eyes, 
My most respectable friend, 
Can dare to look so high, 
Be thankful for the stars. 

Charles Mackay. 



June 15- 



Over and over again, 
No matter which way I turn, 
I always find in the book of life 

Some lesson I have to learn. 
I must take my turn at the mill; 

I must grind out the golden grain; 
I must work at my task with a resolute will, 
Over and over again. 

Over and over again 
The brook through the meadow flows, 
And over and over again 

The ponderous mill-wheel goes. 
Once doing will not suffice, 

Though doing be not in vain; 
And a blessing failing us once or twice 
May come if we try again. 



June 16. 



With brook and bird and breeze in tune, 
The beautiful, bright earth of June 
Moves to the fulness of her noon, 
While serving sunbeams round her fling 
The purple violets as they fleet. 

Harriet P. Spofford. 



We often do more good by our sympathy than by our 

labors. 

Canon Farrar. 



If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live 
so as to deserve happiness. 

Fichu. 



June 17. 



LILAC. 

I cannot tell why lilac -flowers 

Should bring me such strange dreams : 

Within their scented purple buds 
A wondrous witchcraft gleams. 

It pictures languid Persian girls, 
Star-Eyes and Rose-in-Bloom, — 

The jewel-clusters gathering 
In Orient-garden gloom. 

Then in a still New-England lane, 

Beneath the starlight wan, 
My errant fancy stays to kiss 

A dove-eyed Puritan. 

Ah, Lilac ! in your pretty art 

You give me of the best, — 
The passion of the Orient, 

The sweetness of the West ! 

Ellen Alackay Hittchinson* 



Ah ! why not oftener on the living shed 

The fragrance lavished on the unheeding dead? 

Who needs not ministries of strength and cheer? 



In every sphere of faithful service done, 
Thanks, and not pence alone, are fairly won : 
In generous courtesy is found an oil 
To smooth the wheels and hands of daily toil. 

Out of the heart's abundance let some cheer 
Be spoken while your friend hath ears to hear : 
Deck, if you will, with flowers his place of rest, 
But fix the sweetest on his living breast. 

Rev, O. E, Daggett* 



June 19. 



And oh, the buttercups ! that field 
^.V-tbef cloth of gold, where pennons swam, 
Where France set up his lilied shield, 
Hisvorifkmme, ;; 

And Henry's lion-standard rolled : 
What was it to their matchless sheen, ~\ 

Their million million drops of gold 
| Among the green ! 

Jean. Ingelow. 



Leaves axe light and useless and idle and wavering 
and changeable ; they even dance; yet God in his wis- 
dom has made them part of the oak, In so doing he 
has given us a lesson not to deny the stout-heartedness 
within because we see the lightsomeness without. 

Hare, 



June 20. 



SUMMER HYMN. 

The year draws near its golden-hearted prime, 
Fulfilled of grandeur rounded into grace : 

We seem to hear sweet notes of joyance chime 
From elfin bells through many a greenwood place. 

The sovereign summer, robed and garlanded, 

Looks, steeped in verdure, up the enchanted skies ; 

A crown, sun-woven, round her royal head, 
And love's warm languor in her dreamy eyes. 

We quaff our fill of beauty, peace, delight ; 

But mid the entrancing scene a still voice saith, 
" If earth, heaven's shadow, shows a face so bright, 

What of God's summer past the straits of death? 

Paul Hamilton Hayne* 



June 21. 



FOR THE LONGEST DAY. 

Summer ebbs : each day that follows 

Is a reflux from on high, 
Tending to the darksome hollows 

Where the frosts of winter lie. 

Wordsworth, 



What ! shall we be put into a beautiful garden, and 
turn up our noses at it, and call it a " vale of tears," and 
all sorts of bad names (helping thereby to make it so), 
and yet confidently reckon that Nature will never shut it 
up and have done with it, or set about forming a better 
stock of inhabitants? 

Leigh Hunt 



The middle-aged person is liable to run to waist. 



June 122, 



Of what a hideous progeny is debt the father! What 
lies, what meanness, what invasions on self-respect, what 
cares, what double-dealing! .How, hi due season it will 
carve the frank;* open face into wrinkles !; how, like a knife, 
it will stab the honest: heart! : _: 2 c Sj c.;::',? 

- - - -7- Douglas y err old. 



The stern behests of^ duty,, , 7 |» s ,^ ^ ;.: 

- j The doom-books open thrown, , : u , :; 

The heaven ye seek; the helhye fear, 

: Are with yourselves alone. 

J. G. Wtiittier. 



In these sweet_ June days 

The teacher and the scholar trust 

Their' parting feet' to 'separate ways ^ 

J. G. Whittier. 



JUNET"23;, 



Oh, happy he who is in love with beauty! — to whom 
flowers are a heavenly language ; day and night and weeks 
and months and years and centuries a rhythmic song; 
music a revelation of the infinite and the divine ; seas 
and skies and mountains and plains voiceful echoes of 
the everlasting Word, and all life the expression • of the 
everlasting love, 

Oh, happy he who can rise out of his work, and from 
this heavenly realm of culture look down upon it, and 
recognize the fact, that it is only the minister to a life as 
far above it as the heavens are above the earth ! 

I l :?? v".: : : " \r. - " j: G. Holland. 



Good and bad men are each less so than they seem. 

Coleridge. 



June 24. 



I cannot but look on human creeds with feelings 
approaching contempt. When I bring them into contrast 
with the New Testament, into what insignificance do they 
sink ! What are they ? Skeletons, freezing abstractions, 
metaphysical expressions of unintelligible dogmas. Creeds 
are to the Scriptures what rush-lights are to the sun. 

William E, Channing. 



The robin sings, as of old, from the limb I 
The cat-bird croons in the lilac-bush ! 
The rich milk-tinging buttercup 
Its tiny polished urn holds up, 
Filled with ripe summer to the edge, 
The sun in his own wine to pledge. 

Lowell, 



June 25. 



Each 

Must do his own believing. As for me, 

My creed is short as any man's may be. 

'Tis written in the Sermon on the Mount, 

And in the Pater Noster. I account 

The words, "Our Father" (had we lost the rest 

Of that sweet prayer, the briefest and the best 

In all the liturgies), of higher worth 

To ailing souls than all the creeds on earth. 



Why should we look one common faith to find, 
When one in every score is color-blind? 
If here on earth they know not red from green, 
Will they see better into things unseen? 

Holmes, 



June 26. 



THE BOBOLINKS. 

When Nature had made all her birds, 

And had no cares to think on, 
She gave a rippling laugh — and out 

There flew a Bobolinkon. 

What cadences of bubbling mirth 
Too quick for bar or rhythm ! - biU 

What ecstasies, too full to keep 
Coherent measure with them ! 

Hope springs with you : I dread no more 

Despondency and dulness, 
For Good Supreme can never fail 

That gives such perfect fulness. 

C. P. Cranch. 



JUNE" 27. 



Why should I hug life's ills with cold reserve, 
To curse myself and all who love me ? Nay ! 

A thousand times more good than I deserve 
God gives me every day. \ ( : , : ; 

And in each one oL these, rebellious tears, 

Kept bravely back, he makes a rainbow shine : 

Grateful I take his slightest gift; no fears J 
Nor -any. doubts are mine. . 

Then, vex me not with chiding.. Let, me be. 

I must be glad and grateful to the end. 
I grudge you . not your cold and darkness, ■ — me 

The powers of light befriend. 

:J x * Celia Thaxter. 



:V. . .-■' :-JL. ."L v.. s-v '-. 

Some days must be dark and dreary. 

Longfellow. 



June 28. 



Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear, 
It is not night if thou be near. 
Oh, may no earth-born cloud arise, 
To hide thee from thy servant's eyes ! 

Keble. 



I, too, could question, if I would, 
Of all things I have learned to love, 

And fain would answer, if I could, 
For earth below and heaven above. 

But not by questionings I grow, 

Nor halt and turn to mend my gait: 

I live on Yes, and not on No ; 
I trust and love, I work and wait 

Rev. O. E. Daggett 



June 29. 



THE SWEET JUNE TIME. 

The daisies and the buttercups 

Now merrily are growing; 

And everywhere, for June's sweet sake, 

Are crimson roses blowing. 

The sunbeams o'er the meadows lie, 

And breezes light are straying; 

And oh ! 'tis time the schools were done, 

And children out a-playing. 

" Vacation is the time for fun ! " 

All girls and boys are saying, 

When schools and books grow wearisome, 

And hearts are ripe for playing. 

So, little folks, come one and all, 

And — tumble out together, 

Amid the sunbeam's golden bright, 

All in the sweet June weather. 

Mary D. Brine. 



Be merry with sorrow, wise men have said; 
Which saying, being wisely weighed, 
It seems a lesson truly laid 
For those whom sorrows still invade : 
Be merry, friends ! 

Make ye not two sorrows of one ; 
For of one grief grafted alone, 
To graft a sorrow thereupon, 
A sourer crab we can graft none : 
i; - Be merry, "friends ! 

Man hardly hath a richer thing 
Than honest mirth, the which well-spring, 
Watereth the roots of rejoicing, 
Feeding the flowers of flourishing: .. 

;* Be merry, , friends !; \ 

. .-.,.. . . v ., , John Heywood. 



July 1. 

Then came hot July, boyling like to fire, 
I That all his garments he had cast away. 

/< .".'.'> £ . .. Spenser. 



To see the f; hancl of God "in" the present, and to 'trust 
the future in the hand of God; is the secret of peace. 



Sorrow seems sent for our instruction, as we darken 
the: cages of birds when we would teach them to sing. 

Richter. 



Flowers; are the sweetest things that God ever made 
and forgot to put a soul into. 

Beecher. 



July 2. 

Fat men, infatuate, fan the stagnant air, 
In rash essay to cool their inward glowing; 

While with each stroke, in dolorous despair, 
They feel the fever growing ! 

The lean and lathy find a fate as hard; 

For, all-a-dry, they burn like any tinder 
Beneath the solar blaze, till withered, charred, 

And crisped away to cinder ! 

" Tis dreadful, dreadful hot ! " exclaims each one 
Unto his sweating, sweltering, roasting neighbor. 

Then mops his brow, and sighs, as he had done 
A quite herculean labor ! 

J. G. Saxe. 



July 3. 

Let us recognize the beauty and power of true enthu- 
siasm, and guard against checking or chilling a single 

earnest sentiment. 

H. T. Tucherman. 



Independence and self-respect, are essential to happi- 
ness, and these are never to be attained together without 

work. 

J. G. Holland. 



The loafer lies about the world " owing him a living." 
The world owes him nothing but a very rough coffin, 
and a retired and otherwise useless place to put it in. 

J. G. Holland. 



- - ~ t « 



July 4. 

When Freedom from her mountain height 

Unfurled her standard .to the .air 7 
She tore the azure robe of night,: ^ 

And * set the stars_of =j glojy there. 

Forever float that standard sheet, — 

Where breathes the foe but falls before us?— 
With freedom's soil "beneath our feet, " 
, And freedom's banner waving o'er us. 

•*— — — Halleck* 



Let our ofeject be our country/ our whole country, "and 

nothing but our country." ~ c? 7 : 

J , D. Webster^ 



Squeak the fife and beat the drum, 

Independence Day has come. 

Royal Tyler. 



July 5. 

"I'd sooner ha' brewin'-day and washin'-day together," 
says Mrs. Poyser, in Adam Bede, "than one of these 
pleasurin' days. There's no work so tirin' as danglin' 
about, an* staring and not rightly knowin' what you're 
goin' to do next : and keepin' your face i' smilin' order, 
like a grocer o' market-day, for fear people shouldna 
think you civil enough. An' youVe nothin' to show for't 
when it's done, if it isn't a yallow face wi' eatin' things 
as disagree." 



The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless 
when unbroken. 

. Longfellow. 

Our forefathers won independence for us. It remains 

for us to emancipate ourselves from Independence Day. 

I would muzzle the Fourth of July. 

"John Pauir 



July 6. 

Here are sweet-peas, on tiptoe for a flight, 
With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, 
And taper fingers catching at all things 
To bind them all about with tiny rings. 



Keats. 



THE HUMMING-BIRD. 

Little green hunter in meadows of air ! 

Busy, blithe buzzer mid odorous bowers ! 
Are you a bird, say, or something more rare, 
Kin to the butterfly? — flirting with flowers, 
Kissing, caressing them, 
Billing them, pressing them, 
All the day long through the blue balmy hours ! 
Bright little, light little, slight little hummer, 
Lover of sunshine, and lover of summer ! 

Anon. 



July 7. 

Nobody can critically observe the structure of American 
social or domestic life without being struck by the im- 
mense amount of energy which is wasted in the woman's 
half of it. 

The mistake made by all these women whose energy 
is running to waste, is that their aims are too wide and 
too vague. A living is to be earned, not by general 
amateur, lady-like " pottering," as Carlyle grimly calls it, 
but by a definite trade or craft, followed accurately and 
openly. 



Sometimes, just to have one's mood 

Comprehended is relief: 
Simply to be understood 
In one's sorrow is a good 

That avails to soften grief. 

Mary E. Bradley, 



July 8. 

Let not the blessings we receive daily from God make 
us not to value or not praise him, because they be com- 
mon. 

I have been told, that if a man that was born blind 
could obtain to have his sight for but only one hour 
during his whole life, and should, at the first opening of 
his eyes, fix his sight upon the sun when it was in full 
glory, either at the rising or the setting of it, he would be 
so transported and amazed, that he would not willingly 
turn his eyes to behold all the other various beauties this 
world could present to him. And this and many other 
blessings we enjoy daily. And, for most of them, most 
men forget to pay their praise ; but let not us. 

Izaak Walton, 



Constant sunshine, however welcome, 
Ne'er would ripen fruit or flower. 



Anon 



July 9. 

Why are the flowers growing, 
With odors overflowing? 
Because the sun each blossom loves 
More than the honey-bee that roves; 
For this the flowers are growing, 
With odors overflowing. 



E. B. Robinson. 



Don't buy a thermometer now : 
They'll be lower by and by. 



Then, for the fabric of my mind, 
Tis mair to mirth than grief inclined : 
I rather choose to laugh at folly, 
Than show dislike by melancholy. 
Well judging a sour and heavy face, 
Is not the surest mark of grace. 



Anon. 



July 10. 

It is the part of an indiscreet and troublesome ambi- 
tion to care too much about fame, — about what the 
world says of us ; to be always looking into the faces of 
others for approval; to be always anxious for the effect 
of what we do and say ; to be always shouting to hear 
the echo of our own voices. If you look about you, you 
will see men who are wearing life away in feverish anxiety 
of fame ; and the last we shall ever hear of them will be 
the funeral-bell that tolls them to their early graves ! 

Longfellow. 



A pitcher of mignonette, 

In a tenement's highest casement ! 

Queer sort of a flower-pot, — yet 

That pitcher of mignonette 

Is a garden in heaven set 

To the little sick child in the basement. 

Anon. 



July 11. 

We felt all the while the cheer and gladness and 

brightness of her presence, just because she had learned 

to make this great distinction, — to put some things first, 

and other things second. She had learned the great 

secret of life, which is to live in human lives, and not in 

things ; and her sympathies were so broad, that they 

carried her nobly, steadily, cheerily along the Christian 

way. 

William y. Tticker. 



Never fail thy cheerfulness. 

WJiittier. 



Hold out ! there comes an end to sorrow ; 
Hope from the dust shall conquering rise ; 
The storm foretells a summer's morrow; 
The cross points on to paradise ; 
The Father reigneth ! cease all doubt ; 
Hold on, my heart, hold on, hold out ! 

Golden Words. 



July 12. 



MY NASTURTIUMS. 



Quaint blossom with the old fantastic name, 

By jester christened at some ancient feast, 
How royally to-day among the least 

Considered herbs it flings its spice and flame ! 
How careless wears a velvet of the same 

Unfathomed red, which ceased when Titian ceased 
To paint it in the robe of doge and priest ! 

O long-lost loyal red, which never came 
Again to painter's palette ! — on my sight 

It flashes at this moment, trained and poured 
Through my nasturtiums in the morning light. 

H.H. 



July 13. 

No folded morning-glory bud 

Blooms, closes fast, then blooms again : 
Once shaken out, the colors fade, 

The beauty's gone for aye, — but then, 

New buds will open to the day 
When next the early morn awakes ; 

So, though some bright things pass away, 
My heart some hopeful comfort takes. 

Our "life hath many mornings, " so 
Hath said some rarely gifted one ; 

And morning-glory buds will bloom 
With every summer-morning sun. 

y. H. Johnston. 



July 14. 

As June was the month of music and flowers, July is 
the harvest month of the early fruits; and, though the 
poet might prefer the former, the present offers the 
most attractions to the epicure. The rocks and preci- 
pices, so lately crowned with flowers, are festooned with 
thimbleberries. There is no spot so barren that it is not 
covered with something that is beautiful to the sight or 
grateful to the sense. The little pearly flowers that hung 
in profusion from the low blueberry-bushes are trans- 
formed into azure fruits that rival the flower in elegance. 

Summer is surely the season of epicurism, as spring is 
that of the luxury of sentiment. 

Wilson Flagg. 



The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless 
when unbroken. 

Longfellow. 



July 15. 

&t Sfoitijin'a ©ag* 

"If St. Swithin weeps," the proverb says, 
"The weather will be foul for forty days." 



Try it for a day, I beseech you, to preserve yourself 
in an easy and cheerful frame of mind. Compare the 
day in which you have rooted out the weed of dissatis- 
faction with that on which you have allowed it to grow 
up, and you will find your heart open to every good 
motive, your life strengthened, and your breast armed with 
a panoply against every trick of fate : truly, you will 

wonder at your own improvement. 

Richter. 



The best thing in the world is to be a Christian. 

Phillips Brooks. 



July 16. 

There is a flower, a little flower, 
With silver crest and golden eye, 

That welcomes every changing hour, 
And weathers every sky. 

On waste and woodland, rock and plain, 
Its humble buds unheeded rise : 

The rose has but a summer-reign; 
The daisy never dies ! 

Montgomery, 



Clear and simple in white and gold 

Meadow blossom. Of sunlit spaces 

The field is full as it well can hold, 

And white with the drift of the ox-eye daisies. 

Z>. R. Goodale. 



July 17. 

THE FOUNTAIN. 

Into the sunshine, 

Full of the light, 
Leaping and flashing 

From morn until night; 
Ever in motion, 

Blithesome and cheery, 
Still climbing heavenward, 

Never a- weary, — 
Glorious fountain, 

Let my heart be 
Fresh, changeful, constant, 

Upward, like thee ! 



Lowell. 



He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, 
And he who has one enemy shall meet him everywhere. 

Oriental. 



July 18. 

The human race may, for practical purposes, be divided 
into three parts : i. Honest men, who mean to do right, 
and do it ; 2. Knaves, who mean to do wrong, and do it ; 
3. Fools, who mean to do whichever of the two is the 
pleasanter. These last may be divided again into black 
fools, who would rather do wrong, but dare not, unless it 
is the fashion ; white fools, who would rather do right, but 
dare not, unless it is the fashion. 

Charles Kingsley. 



Yellow-Bird, where did you learn that song, 
Perched on the trellis where grape-vines clamber, 
In and out fluttering, all day long, 
With your golden breast bedropped with amber ? 

Where do you hide such a store of delight, 
O delicate creature, tiny and slender ! 
Like a mellow morning sunbeam bright, 
And overflowing with music tender? 

Celia Thaxter. 



July 19. 

And her against sweet Cheerfulness was placed, 
Whose eyes, like twinkling stars in evening clear, 
Were decked with smiles that all sad humors chased, 
And darted forth delights the which her goodly graced. 

Spenser. 



Hood asserts that the phrase " republic of letters " is 
used to insinuate, that, taking the whole tribe of authors 
together, they have not a sovereign amongst them. 



Just to bloom beside your way — 
That is why the flowers are sweet : 

You want fresh ones every day — 
That is why the flowers are fleet. 

Louise C. Moulton. 



July 20. 

A FATAL REPUTATION. 

But learn to wear a sober phiz; 

Be stupid, if you can : 
It's such a very serious thing 

To be a funny man. 



Saxe. 



At last I discovered, that wherever I went, and under 
whatever circumstances (except, of course, at the funeral 
of a member of the family), I was expected to be amusing. 
I found myself in the same relation to society that the clown 
bears to the circus-master who has engaged him, — he must 
either be funny or leave the troupe. 

I adjure all youthful and hopeful persons, who have a 
tendency to be funny, to keep it a profound secret from 
the world. 

Isabel F, Bellows. 



July 21. 

Blest power of sunshine ! genial day, 
What balm, what life, is in thy ray ! 
To feel there is such real bliss, 
That, had the world no joy but this, 
To sit in sunshine calm and sweet, 
It were a world too exquisite 
For men to leave it, for the gloom, 
The deep, cold shadow, of the tomb. 

Moore. 



Every person is responsible for all the good within the 
scope of his abilities, and for no more; and none can tell 
whose sphere is the largest. 

Gail Hamilton, 



We do not go to heaven, but heaven comes to us. 
They whose inner eye is opened to see heaven, and they 
who see it, are in it • and the air to them is thick with 
angels, like the background of Raphael's " Mother in Glory.' ' 

F. Hedge. 



July 22. 

It is a strange fancy of mine, but I cannot help wishing 
we could move for returns — as their phrase is in parlia- 
ment — for the suffering caused in any one day, or other 
period of time, throughout the world, to be arranged under 
certain heads ; and we should then see what the world has 
occasion to fear most. What a large amount would come 
under the heads of unreasonable fear of others, of miser- 
able quarrels amongst relations upon infmitesimally small 
subjects, of imaginary slights, of undue cares, of false shames, 
of absolute misunderstandings, of unnecessary pains to main- 
tain credit or reputation, of vexation that we cannot . make 
others of the same mind with ourselves ! What a wonderful 
thing it would be to see set down in figures, as it were, how 
ingenious we are in plaguing one another ! 

Arthur Helps. 



July 23. 

/_ 

Many a child goes astray simply because home lacks 
sunshine. A child needs smiles as much as the flowers 
need sunbeams. If a thing pleases, they are apt to seek 
it : if it displeases, they are apt to avoid it. If home is a 
place where faces are sour, and words harsh, and fault-find- 
ing is ever in the ascendant, they will spend as many hours 
as possible elsewhere. 



Every- man's life is a fairy-tale written by God's, fingers. 

H. C. Andersen* 



Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun 

within us. 

Sir T. Browne. 



July 24. 

JULY. 

When the scarlet cardinal tells 

Her dream to the dragon-fly, 
And the lazy breeze makes a nest in the trees, 

And murmurs a lullaby, 
It is July. 

When the tangled cobweb pulls 
The corn-flower's blue cap awry, 

And the lilies tall lean over the wall 
To bow to the butterfly, 
It is July. 

When the heat like a mist-veil floats, 

And poppies flame in the rye, 
And the silver note in the streamlet's throat 

Has softened almost to a sigh, 
It is July. 

When the hours are so still that Time 

Forgets them, and lets them lie 
'Neath petals pink till the night stars wink 
At the sunset in the sky, 
It is July. 
Susan Hartley Swell, in St, Nicholas. 



July 25. 

HAPPINESS IN LITTLE THINGS OF THE PRESENT. 

We live not in our moments or our years : 

The present we fling from us like the rind 
Of some sweet future, which we after find 

Bitter to taste, or bind that in with fears, 
And water it beforehand with our tears, — 

Vain tears for that which never may arrive ; 
Meanwhile the joy whereby we ought to live, 

Neglected or unheeded disappears. 
Wiser it were to welcome and make ours 

Whate'er of good, though small, the present brings, ■ 
Kind greetings, sunshine, songs of birds, and flowers, ■ 

With a child's pure delight in little things, 
And of the griefs unborn to rest secure, 

Knowing that mercy ever will endure. 

Dean Trench. 



July 26. 

The star I was born under tells me to look up. If we 

didn't come into this world to better ourselves, we might 

as well have staid where we were. 

Jerrold. 



It is as great to be a woman as to be a man. 

Walt Whitman, 



Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavor. 

Samuel Johnson, 



As the sun does not wait for prayers and incantations 
before he rises, but straightway shines forth, and is hailed 
of all : so do not wait to do good for applause and noise 
and praise, but do it of your own desire ; and, like the 
sun, you will be loved. 

Eftictetus. 



July 27. 

Mirth has an hygienic value that can hardly be over- 
rated while our social life remains what the slavery of 
vices and dogmas has made it. 

Joy has been called the sunshine of the heart, yet the 
same sun that calls forth the flower of a plant is also 
needed to expand its leaves and ripen its fruits ; and, 
without the stimulus of exhilarating pastimes, perfect 
'bodily health is as impossible as moral and mental vigor. 
And, as sure as a succession of uniform crops will exhaust 
the best soil, the daily repetition of a monotonous occu- 
pation will wear out the best man. 

Felix L. Oswald. 



Honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry 

meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to 

that where the jokes are rather small and the laughter 

abundant. 

W. Irving. 



July 28. 

I wonder what the clover thinks, 
Intimate friend of bobolinks, 
Lover of daisies slim and white, 
Waltzer with buttercups at night; 
Keeper of inn for travelling-bees, 
Serving to them wine-dregs and lees 
Left by the royal humming-birds, 
Who sip, and pay with fine-spun words; 
Fellow with all the loveliest, 
Peer of the gayest and the best ; 
Comrade of wind, beloved of sun, 
Kissed by the dew-drops one by one; 
Prophet of good-luck mystery 
By sign of four, which few may see ; 
Sweet by the roadsides, sweet by rills, 
Sweet in the meadows, sweet on hills, 
Sweet in white, sweet in its red, 
Oh ! half its sweet cannot be said. 

Saxe Holm. 



July 29. 



God is no Arabian Nights' good genius nor fairy, nor 

familiar spirit, in attendance on his favored children, to 

catch them when they fall, to avert the sword or bullet that 

is aimed at them, or to save them from wind and wave, 

shipwreck and storm. He lends his strength in and 

through the very evils that come from the operation of 

his universal providence, not by averting their physical 

consequences, but by fortifying the heart and will that 

survive them, not necessarily here, but somewhere and 

forever. 

Henry W. Bellows. 



The Lord God is a sun and shield. 



Religion is no leaf of faded green, 

Or flower of vanished fragrance, pressed between 

The pages of a Bible \ but from seeds 

Of love it springeth, watered by good deeds. 

y. T. Trowbridge* 



July SO. 



FERNS. 

Ferns, beautiful ferns, 

By the side of the running waters, 
Lovely and sweet and fresh, 

As the fairest of earth-born daughters; 
Under the dreamy shade 

Of the forest's mighty branches, 
Curving their graceful shapes 

To the playful wind's advances. 

Ferns, delicate ferns, 

Neighbors of emerald mosses; 
Having no thought or care 

For worldly attainments or losses. 
Children of shadow serene, 

Fresh at the heart through the summer: 
Over the cool springs they lean, 

Where the sunbeam is rarely a comer. 

Ferns, feathery ferns, 

Delicate, slender, and frail; 
Nursed by the streamlet, whose song 

Is music for hillside and vale. 
Purity, modesty, grace, 

Emblems of these to the mind; 
Loving the quietest place, 

That ever a sunbeam will find. 

Anon. 



July 31. 

What boots it to repeat 
How time is skipping underneath our feet? 
Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday — 
Why fret about them if to-day be sweet? 

Persian. 



Know'st thou Yesterday, its aim and reason? 
Work'st thou well To-day for worthy things? 

Then calmly wait the morrow's hidden season, 
And fear not thou what hap soe'er it brings. 



There are some people who think they make the most 
of life when they make it as wretched as possible. Lut- 
trell was once asked if an acquaintance of his was not 
very disagreeable. " Well," was the reply, " he is always 
as disagreeable as the circumstances will permit." 



August 1. 



In the parching August wind, 
Cornfields bow the head, 
Sheltered in round valley depths, 
On low hills outspread. 



C. G. Rossettu 



The man was dust refined, but the woman was dust 

double-refined, — one remove farther from the earth. The 

woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam, — not 

made out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to 

be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be 

equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near 

his heart to be beloved. 

Matthew Henry. 



The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious 

of none. 

Carlyle. 



August 2. 



I didn't seem to be needed so much a-judgin' the 
world, and settlin' on jest how many was a-goin' to be 
saved or lost, as I did a-mindin' my own business, and 
tryin' to read my own title clear to mansions in the 
skies. Says I, " I find it a tuckerin' job to take care 
of one sinner as she ort to be took care of; and it 
would make me ravin* crazy if I had to take care of 
the hull universe." 

It fairly makes me out of patience, when there is so 
much work our Master sot for us to do for his sake, — it 
fairly makes me mad to see folks refuse to do a mite of 
that work, but tackle jobs they hain't sot to tackle. 

Marietta Holley. 



Job says, "Why should a living man complain? " 1 
really don't know, except it be that a dead man can't. 

Byron. 



August 3. 



It is difficult to estimate how great a part of all that 
is cheerful and delightful in the recollections of our life 
is associated with trees. 

Trees are among the most poetic objects of creation. 
Every wood teems with legends of mythology and ro- 
mance, every tree is vocal with music, and their flowers 
and fruits do not afford more luxury to the sense than 
delight to the mind. Trees have their roots in the 
ground; but they send up their branches towards the 
skies, and are so many supplicants to Heaven for bless- 
ings on the earth. 



Wilson Flagg. 



As for marigolds, poppies, hollyhocks, and valorous 
sunflowers, we shall never have a garden without them, 
both for their own sake, and for the sake of old-fash- 
ioned folks who used to love them. 

H. W. Beecher. 



August 4. 



Of some very lachrymose person Rivarol said, "The 
prophet Jeremiah would have appeared a buffoon by the 
side of him." 



T^e quiet August noon has come : 
A slumberous silence fills the sky ; 

The fields are still, the woods are dumb ; 
In glassy sleep the waters lie. 

Away ! I will not be to-day 

The only slave of toil and care. 
Away from desk and dust ! away ! 

I'll be as idle as the air. 

Bryant, 



August 5. 



Our Lord God is like a printer, who sets the letter? 
backwards. We see and feel him set the types well, but 
we cannot read them. When we are printed off yonder, 
in the life to come, we shall read all clear and straight- 
forward. Meantime we must have patience. 

Luther. 



What need of faith, if all were visibly clear? 

Tis for the trial-time that this was given. 
Though clouds be thick, its sun is just as near; 

And faith will find Him in the heart of heaven. 



Some comfort when all else is night 

About his fortune plays, 
Who sets his dark to-days in the light 

Of the sunnier yesterdays. 

Thank God, when other power decays, 

And other pleasures die, 
We still may set our dark to-days 

In the light of days gone by. 

Alice Cary. 



August 6. 



Like a cradle, rocking, rocking, 

Silent, peaceful, to and fro ; 
Like a mother's sweet looks dropping 

On the little face below, — 
Hangs the green earth, swinging, turning, 

Jarless, noiseless, safe, and slow; 
Falls the light of God's face, bending 

Down, and watching us below. 

And as feeble babes that suffer, 

Toss and cry, and will not rest, 
Are the ones the tender mother 

Holds the closest, loves the best; 
So when we are weak and wretched, 

By our sins weighed down, distressed, 
Then it is that God's great patience 

Holds us closest, loves us best. 

Saxe Halm, 



August 7. 



Anatomikally konsidered, laffing iz the sensashtm of 
pheeling good all over, and showing it principally in one 
spot. 

Morally konsidered, it iz the next best thing tew the 
Ten Commandments. 

Genuine laffing iz the vent of the soul, the nostrils of 
the heart, and iz jist az necessary for helth and happi- 
ness az spring water iz for a trout. 



A CHEERFUL VIEW OF THINGS. 

" How dismal you look ! " said a Bucket to his com- 
panion, as they were going to the well. 

"Ah!" replied the other: "I was reflecting on the 
uselessness of our being filled ; for, let us go away ever 
so full, we always come back empty. " 

" Dear me ! how strange to look at it in that way ! " 
said the Bucket. " Now, I enjoy the thought, that, how- 
ever empty we come, we always go away full. Only look 
at it in that light, and you'll be as cheerful as I am." 



August 8. 



Flowers preach to us if we will hear. 

The rose saith in the dewy morn, 

" I am most fair, 

Yet all my loveliness is born 

Upon a thorn.' ' 

The lilies say, "Behold how we 

Preach, without words, of purity ! " 

But not alone the fairest flowers : 
The merest grass 

Along the roadside where we pass, 
Lichen and moss and sturdy weed, 
Tell of His love who sends the dew, 
The rain, and the sunshine too, 
To nourish one small seed. 

G. D. Rossetti. 



August 9. 



MAN AND HIS SHOES. 

How much a man is like old shoes ! 

For instance, both a sole may lose ; 

Both have been tanned, both are made tight 

By cobblers. Both get left and right, 

Both need a mate to be complete, 

And both are made to go on feet. 

They both need healing : oft are sold, 

And both in time all turn to mould. 

With shoes the last is first; with men 

The first shall be last ; and, when 

The shoes wear out, they're mended new ; 

When men wear out they're men dead too. 

They both are trod upon ; and both 

Will tread on others, nothing loath. 

Both have their ties ; and both incline, 

When polished, in the world to shine ; 

And both peg out — and would you choose 

To be a man, or be his shoes? 

New Orleans Picayune, 



August 10. 



Flowers, though born of earth, we may well believe, — 
if any thing of earthly soil grows in the higher realm, 
if any of its methods are continued, if any of the forms 
are identical there, — will live on the banks of the River 
of Life. Flowers ! that in all our gladness, in all our 
sorrow, are never incongruous, always appropriate. Ap- 
propriate in the church, as expressive of its purest and 
most social themes, and blending their sweetness with 
incense of prayer. Appropriate in the joy of the marriage 
hour — in the loneliness of the sick-room — and crowning 
with prophesy the forehead of the dead. They give 
completeness to the associates of childhood, and are 
appropriate, even by the side of old age, strongly as their 
freshness contrasts with the wrinkles and gray hairs ; for 
still they are suggestive — they are symbolical of the soul's 
perpetual youth, the inward blossoming of immortality, 
the amaranthine crown. In their presence we feel, that, 
when the body shall be as a withered calyx, the soul shall 
go forth like a winged steed. 

Chapin. 



August 11. 



Is this a time to be cloudy and sad, 

When our Mother Nature laughs around, 

When even the deep-blue heavens look glad, 

And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground ? 

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, 
And the gossip of swallows through all the sky : 

The ground-squirrel gayly chirps by his den, 
And the wilding bee hums merrily by. 

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles 
On the dewy earth, that smiles in his ray, 

On the leaping waters and gay young isles, — 
Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away. 

Bryant. 



August 12. 



Hearts grown a-weary with heavier woe 

Droop mid the darkness, — go, comfort them, go ! 

Bury thy sorrow : let others be blest ; 

Give them the sunshine, tell Jesus the rest. 



And up the east another day 
Shall chase the bitter dark away. 
What though our eyes with tears be wet? 
The sunrise never failed us yet. 

The blush of dawn may yet restore 
Our light and hope and joy once more. 
Sad soul, take comfort, nor forget 
That sunrise never failed us yet. 

Celia Thaxter. 



Let us seek the seaside, there 
To wander idly as we list. 



Low el L 



August 13. 



No woman can be the worse for possessing brains. The 
hue and cry set up against higher education, examinations, 
and new openings for woman's work, has a hollow ring about 
it. Men have a sneaking suspicion that they are not so 
intellectually superior as they have been led to suppose. 
Unconsciously to themselves, they are afraid of being found 
out ; or else perhaps they are lazy, and are fearful of being 
stirred up. 

Yet womanliness does not consist in intellectuality. The 
first thing in which it does consist is self-respect. 

Samuel Pearson, 



A TRUE FRIEND. 

Thou mayest be sure that he that will in private tell thee 
thy faults, is thy friend ; for he adventures thy dislike, and 
doth hazard thy hatred : for there are few men that can 
endure it ; every man, for the most part, delighting in self- 
praise, which is one of the most universal follies that be- 

witcheth mankind. 

Sir Walter Raleigh. 



August 14. 



Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured, but, like 
the sun, only for a time. 

Bovee. 



The spikes from the thistle-blossom and other winged 
seeds, which send their pretty pinnaces afloat on our August 
air, have not this summer, so much as another summer, in 
view. Even when November spreads her pall, there will be 
buds ready formed, and protected against the winter, which 
the warm south wind and sunshine of the coming spring 
will awaken. Nothing goes out of existence carelessly : 
nothing has danced or piped for simply selfish ends. Into 
the whole, and in its parts, is blown the subtle breath and 
potency of a sure, and not remote, resurrection. And so — 

"The specious panorama of a year 
But multiplies the image of a day, — 
A belt of mirrors round a taper's flame; 
And universal Nature, through her vast 
And crowded whole, an infinite paroquet, 
Repeats one note." 



August 15. 



There is no blessedness in life 

Apart from blessed love : 
This sanctifies the dreary strife 

Which all who live must prove. 
It lifts the burden from the soul, 

And puts the staff into the hand : 
The gloomy clouds behind us roll, 

And all before is dawn and fairy-land. 

Oh, love is light where all is dark ! 

It goeth on before, 
A strong and still preserved ark, 

Though tempests round us roar. 
Oh, love the sphered world contains ! 

All life within itself it hath : 
All else goes by; but love remains, 

And waves a heaven-lit torch before our path. 

C. P. Cranch. 



August 16. 



No one who has not suffered deeply has ever loved deeply, 

prayed deeply, enjoyed deeply. The plough which cuts 

sharpest furrows in our hearts, alone enables them to bear 

their richest harvest. 

F. P. Cobbe. 

If none were sick, and none were sad, 

What service could we render? 
I think, if we were always glad, 

We scarcely could be tender. 
Did our beloved never need 

Our patient ministration, 
Earth would grow cold, and miss indeed 

Its sweetest consolation. 
If sorrow never claimed our heart, 

And every wish were granted, 
Patience would die, and hope depart : 

Life would be disenchanted. 

j. Besemeres. 



August 17. 



Give me the old Dutch honeysuckle 
A-makin' even the night-time sweet, 

A-blossomm' at every knuckle, 

And hangin' to your very feet. 

And pink and buff and white carnations, 
And rosebuds snuggled up in moss, 

Heart's-ease and vi'lets, dear relations, 

And gay snapdragons, bright and cross. 

Give me the good old week-day blossoms 

I used to see so long ago, 
With hearty sweetness in their bosoms, 

Ready and glad to bud an' blow. 

Rose Terry Cooke, 



August 18. 



The year goes wrong, and tares grow strong; 

Hope starves without a crumb ; 

But God's time is our harvest time, 

And that is sure to come. 

L. J. Bates. 



A lady may give her husband a piece of her mind, if 
she chooses, but she shouldn't break the peace. 

G. D. Prentice. 



Voltaire characterized the employment of a medical 
man as "pouring drugs, of which' he knew very little, 
into bodies, of which he knew less." 



"How does your horse answer?" inquired the Duke of 
Cumberland of George Selwyn. 

"I really don't know," George replied. "I have never 
asked him a question." 



August 19. 



It would be a poor result of all our anguish and wres- 
tling, if we were nothing but our old selves at the end of 
it, — if we could return to the same blind loves, the same 
self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suf- 
fering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, 
the same feeble sense of that unknown toward which we 
have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. 

Adam Bede. 



Yet meekly yield when thou must drink 
The righteous cup of human sorrow, 

For patient suff'ring is the link 

Which binds us to a glorious morrow. 

Norman Macleod* 



August 20. 



Faith iz the rite bower ov Hope. If it wan't for faith, 
thare would be no living in this world. We couldn't even 
eat hash with enny safety if it wan't for faith. 

Faith iz one ov them warriors who don't kno when she 
iz whipped. 



A GOOD HINT. 

Always do as the sun does, — look at the bright side of 
every thing : it is just as cheap, and three times as good for 
digestion. Do it — if you can. 



Light-enchanted sunflower, thou 

Who gazest ever true and tender 

On the sun's revolving splendor! 

Shelley. 



August 21. 



Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought : our 
brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by 
unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their 
odors from time to time in the paths of life grow up 
without culture, from seeds scattered by chance. 

Samuel Johnson. 



I think it must somewhere be written, that the virtues 
of mothers shall occasionally be visited on the children, 
as well as the sins of their fathers. 

Dickens. 



Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices. 

Emerson. 



Moderation is the silken string running through the 

pearl chain of all virtues. 

Thomas Fuller. 



August 22. 



Buttercup nodded, and said " good-by ; " 
Clover and daisy went off together ; 
But the fragrant water-lilies lie 
Yet moored in the golden August weather. 

Celia Thaxter. 



Some folks think that their personal importance fills a 

large space in the public eye, when it is all in their 

own. 

G. D. Prentice. 



The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands 

of Affliction. 

Spurgeon. 



No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any 
pleasure so lasting. 



Lady Mary Montagu. 



August 23. 



"O dreary life!" we cry, "O dreary life!" 

And still the generations of the birds 

Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds 

Serenely live while we are keeping strife 

With Heaven's true purpose in us, as a knife 

Against which we may struggle. Ocean girds 

Unslackened the dry land : savannah- swards 

Unweary sweep : hills watch, unworn ; and rife 

Meek leaves drop yearly from the forest-trees, 

To show above the unwasted stars that pass 

In their old glory. O thou God of old ! 

Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these; — ■ 

But so much patience as a blade of grass 

Grows by contented through the heat and cold. 

Mrs. Browning. 



August 24. 



In the latter part of August we begin to mark the 
approaching footsteps of Autumn. 

Already do I hear at nightfall the chirping of the 
cicadas, whose notes are at the same time the harvest- 
hymn of Nature/ and a dirge over the departure of the 
flowers. 



I love to hear thine earnest voice, 

Wherever thou art hid, 

Thou testy little dogmatist, 

Thou pretty Katydid ! 

Holmes, 



It seems no more than right that men should seize Time 
by the forelock, for the rude old fellow sooner or later pulls 
all their hair out. 



August 25. 



On the bathing-tub of K'ang the following words were 
engraved : " If you can, renovate yourself each day." 



Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being 

eminent. 

Swift 



In English I would have all Gallicisms avoided, that 

our tongue may be sincere, and that we may keep to 

our own language. 

Felton. 



I have seen in Islington churchyard an epitaph to an 

infant who died cztatis four months, with this seasonable 

inscription appended : " Honor thy father and thy mother, 

that thy days may be long in the land," etc. 

Lamb, 



August 26. 



One adequate support 
For the calamities of mortal life 
Exists, — one only : an assured belief 
That the procession of our fate, howe'er 
Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being 
Of infinite benevolence and power, 
Whose everlasting purposes embrace 
All accidents, converting them to good. 

Wordsworth. 



Make me as one that casteth not by day 
A dreary shadow, but reflecting aye 
One little beam, loved, warmed and golden, caught 
From the bright sun that lights our daily way. 

/. P. Boynton. 



August 27. 



MIDSUMMER SONG. 

Now flits the bee through clover- dales, 

Now shallow grows the river 
In leafy nooks where lilies float 

And wandering sunbeams quiver. 
Now thistledown begins to fly, 
And drowsily the south winds sigh, 
"Good-by, good-by, 
Good-by." 

O fair Midsummer ! Like the bee 

A-dream in sylvan places, 
We taste the sweetness of thy bloom, 

Thy wonderful, wild graces. 
Alas ! must all this beauty die ? — ■ 
Drowsily the soft winds sigh, 
" Good-by, good-by, 
Good-by." 

Ellen M. Hutchinson. 



August 28. 



Some day in August, if you will watch carefully, you will 
see a whole colony of swallows congregate on the shed or 
barn. They are somewhat mute and pensive for once. 
They have been holding this conference, on occasions, for 
several days. But to-morrow you will look for them in vain. 
The ragged remnant of summer that is left must get on with- 
out them, and we feel that the year has made a definite step 
again toward its close. 

"Into the dun and mellow sky 

The playful swallows dip and dart : 
Now, in their reckless course, apart, 
And now in various groups they fly. 

To-morrow, on the old gray shed 
They gather, twitterless and mute : 
Another day wise men dispute, 

But cannot tell where they have fled." 



August 29. 



To be resigned when ills betide, 
Patient when favors are denied, 
And pleased with favors given, 
This surely is true wisdom's part, 
This is that incense of the heart 
Whose fragrance swells to heaven. 

W. Cotton. 



Stars lying in God's hand, 

We know ye were not planned 

Merely to light men on their midnight way. 

Shine on, ye fiery stars ! 

It may be through your bars 

We shall pass upwards to eternal day. 

Hamilton Aide. 



August 30. 



Nothing makes a man so contented as an experience 
gathered from a well-watched past. As the beauty of the 
finest landscape is sometimes marred, on actual inspection, 
by a nauseous weed at your feet, or painful headache, or 
many little things, which detract from a loveliness only 
fully felt in the recollection when those trifles are forgotten ; 
so our chief happiness is too often in recollections of the 
past, or anticipation of the future. Now, it is knowing 
what the past really was, which we now recall with so much 
pleasure, and over which there seems to be " a light which 
never was on sea or land," that we are able to estimate the 
amount of happiness and value of the present. And I 
think he who does this will seldom be discontented; for 
the miseries of life are few, and its blessings are new to 
us every morning and evening. 

Norman Macleod. 



August 31. 



Stately hollyhocks, row on row, 

Golden sunflowers all aglow, 

Scarlet poppies, and larkspurs blue, 

Asters of every shade and hue; 

And over the wall, like a trail of fire, 

The red nasturtium climbs high and higher. 

My lady's-slippers are fair to see, 
And her pinks are as sweet as sweet can be, 
With gillyflowers and mourning-brides, 
And many another flower besides. 

Julia Dorr. 



Faith draws the poison from every grief, takes the sting 
from every loss, and quenches the fire of every pain ; and 
only faith can do it. 

J. G. Holland. 



September 1. 



This is the first day of autumn. Summer is gone, — 
how swiftly and unperceivedly ! It has seemed to me like 
a green leaf floating upon a silent river. ... In like man- 
ner the gold leaf of autumn has been glistening in the dis- 
tance, and drawing daily nearer. It, too, in turn will glow 
and shine upon the spotted stream of time, and go past. . . . 
To-day is a goblet-day. The whole heavens have been 
mingled with exquisite skill to a delicious flavor, and the 
crystal cup put to every lip. Breathing is like ethereal 
drinking. It is a luxury simply to exist. 

Beecher. 



R stands for oyster, and all should remember, 
The opening season this first of SeptembeR. 



September 2. 



Life has no significance to me save as the theatre in 
which my powers are developed and disciplined for use, 
and made fruitful in securing my own independence, and 
the good of those around me, or as the scene in which 
I am fitted for the work and worship of the world beyond. 

y. G. Holland. 



Hand in hand with angels, 

Through the world we go ; 
Brighter eyes are on us 

Than we blind ones know; 
Tenderer voices cheer us 

Than we deaf will own ; 

Never, walking heavenward, 

Can we walk alone. 

Lucy Larcom. 



September 3. 



SEPTEMBER. 

The golden-rod is yellow, 
The corn is turning brown, 

The trees in apple-orchards 
With fruit are bending down. 

The gentian's bluest fringes 
Are curling in the sun, 

In dusky pods the milkweed 
Its hidden silk has spun. 

The sedges flaunt their harvest 
In every meadow-nook, 

And asters by the brookside 
Make asters in the brook. 

By all these lovely tokens 
September days are here, 

With summer's best of wealth, 
And autumn's best of cheer. 



H. H. 



September 4. 



The longer I live, the more certain I am that the great 
difference between men, the feeble and the powerful, the 
great and the insignificant, is energy and invincible deter- 
mination, — a purpose once fixed, and then death or vic- 
tory. That quality will do any thing that can be done in 
this world; and no talents, no circumstances, no oppor- 
tunities, will make a two-legged creature a man without it. 

Sir T. Fowell Buxton. 



When the wayside tangles blaze 

In the low September sun, 

When the flowers of summer day 

Droop and wither one by one, 

Reaching up through bush and brier, 

Sumptuous brow and heart of fire, 

Flaunting high its wind-rocked plume, 

Brave with wealth of native bloom, — 

Golden-rod ! 

Elaine Goodale. 



September 5. 



We are unwilling walkers. We are not innocent and 
simple-hearted enough to enjoy a walk. We have fallen 
from that state of grace which capacity to enjoy a walk 
implies. It cannot be said, that as a people we are so posi- 
tively sad or morose or melancholic as that we are vacant 
of that sportiveness and surplusage of animal spirits that 
characterized our ancestors, and that springs from full and 
harmonious life, — a sound heart in accord with a sound 
body. A man must invest himself near at hand, and in 
common things, and be content with a steady and mod- 
erate return, if he would know the blessedness of a cheer- 
ful heart, and the sweetness of a walk over the round earth. 
This is a lesson the American has yet to learn, — capability 
of amusement on a low key. 



John Burroughs. 



One always has time enough, if one will apply it well. 

Goethe. 



September 6. 



September may be described as the month of tall weeds. 
Where they have been suffered to stand, along fences, by 
roadsides, and in forgotten corners, — red-root, pig-weed, 
rag-weed, vervain, golden-rod, burdock, elecampane, this- 
tles, teasels, nettles, asters, etc., — how they lift themselves 
up, as if not afraid to be seen now ! They are all out- 
laws; every man's hand is against them; yet how surely 
they hold their own ! They love the roadside because here 
they are comparatively safe; and, ragged and dusty, like 
the common tramps that they are, they form one of the 
characteristic features of early fall. 



John Burroughs. 



And, crowding close along the way, 
The purple asters blossom free. 

Dora R. Goodale. 



September 7. 



I ask not that for me the plan 

Of good and ill be set aside, 
But that the common lot of man 

Be nobly borne, and glorified. 

And that, though it be mine to know 
How hard the stoniest pillow seems, 

Good angels still may come and go 
About the places of my dreams. 

Phoebe Cary. 



What she suffered, she shook off in the sunshine. 

Mrs. Browning. 



Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health, and as 
friendly to the mind as to the body. 



A ddison. 



September 8. 



"If a man will not work, neither shall he eat." Nor a 
woman either ; for the old creed, that our sex must always 
be dependent on the other, has become a creed outworn. 
First, because there are not enough of males to protect us ; 
and secondly, because many of them are quite incapable 
of doing it. Generally speaking, a woman at any age out 
of teens, being well educated, prudent, and possessed of a 
tolerable amount of common sense and ordinary " gump- 
tion/ ' can take care of herself fully as well as any man can 
do it for her ; and, except in the love-phase of life, — when 
help is so delicious and helplessness so sweet, — most men 
prefer a woman who will and can take care of herself. It 

saves them a world of trouble. 

D. M. Muloch. 



The creed of the true saint is, to make the best of life, 

and make the most of it. 

Chapin. 



, 



September 9. 



Sweet, sweet, sweet, 
Is the wind's song, 
Astir in the rippled wheat 
All day long. 
That exquisite music calls 
The reaper everywhere. 
Life and death must share 
The golden harvest-falls. 

Master, Consoler, Friend, 

Make thou the harvest of our days 

To fall within thy ways. 

Fannie R. Feudge. 

God is glorified, not by our groans, but our thanks- 
givings; and all good thought and good action claim a 
natural alliance with good cheer. 

E. P. Whipple. 



September 10. 



Can you suppose there is any harm in looking as cheer- 
ful, and being as cheerful, as our poor circumstances will 
permit? Do I see any thing in the way I'm made which 
calls upon me to be a snivelling, solemn, whispering chap, 
sneaking about as if I couldn't help it, and expressing my- 
self in a most unpleasant snuffle? On the contrary, don't 
I see every reason why I shouldn't ? 



Dickens, 



" Life of my desires," said Pyrocles, " what is mine, 
even to my soul, is yours; but the secret of my friend 

is not mine." 

Sir Philip Sidney, 



I lay it down as a fact, that, if all men knew what 

they say of one another, there would not be four friends 

in the world. 

Pascal, 



September 11. 



In a tete-a-tete conversation with Mrs. Hall, on the 
subject of some young ladies who had been suddenly 
bereft of fortune, Lady Morgan said, with an emphatic 
wave of her dear old green fan, "They do every thing 
that is fashionable imperfectly : their singing and draw- 
ing and dancing and languages amount to nothing. 
They were educated to marry ; and, had there been time, 
they might have gone off with, and hereafter from, hus- 
bands. They cannot earn their own salt : they do not 
even know how to dress themselves. I desire to give 
every girl, no matter her rank, a trade, — a profession if 
that word pleases you better : cultivate all things in mod- 
eration, but one thing to perfection, no matter what it is, 
for which she has a talent. Give her a staff to lay hold 
of: let her feel, ' This will carry me through life without 
dependence. , " 



September 12. 



People seem to be contented with "pretty good," 
" well enough," " as good as the average/ ' " all that is 
required ; " and they are apt to shelter themselves behind 
one or other of these phrases, if you try to arouse them 
to something better. This weakness, this failure to come 
up to any thing more than what is merely passable, 
seems to be a want of courage, combined with a want 
of energy, — in plain language, a mixture of cowardice 
and laziness. 

William Everett 



Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firma- 
ment. Life and power are scattered with all its beams. 

D. Webster. 



September 13. 



The morrow was a bright September morn; 
The earth was beautiful as if new-born ; 
There was that nameless splendor everywhere, 
That wild exhilaration in the air, 
Which makes the passers in the city street 
Congratulate each other as they meet. 

Longfellow. 



Life, weVe been long together, 

Through pleasant and through cloudy weather : 

Tis hard to part when friends are dear; 

Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear. 

Then steal away, give little warning, 

Choose thine own time. 

Say not " Good-night," but in some brighter clime 

Bid me "Good-morning." 

Mrs, Barbauld. 



September 14. 



Dance, dance as long as you can : we must travel 
through life, but why make a dead march of it? 

Eliza Cook, 



Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches; 
and, to make knowledge valuable, you must have the 
cheerfulness of wisdom. Goodness smiles to the last. 



Emerson, 



Laugh at those who grumble, 
And be jolly as you can. 

Saxe. 



Persistent people begin their success where others end 

in failure. 

Edward Eggleston. 



September 15. 



The Master hath need of the reapers; 

And, mourner, he calleth to thee. 
Come out of the valley of sorrow, 

Look up to the hill-tops, and see 
How the fields of the harvest are whitening, 

How golden and full is the grain : 
Oh ! what are thy wants to the summons ? 

And what are thy grief and thy pain? 

Mrs. Archbishop Thomson. 



Be strong, O heart of mine ! 
Look towards the light. 

Adelaide Procter. 



I say to thee, be thou satisfied. 

Burton. 



September 16. 



Now that the sun is gleaming bright, 

Implore we, bending low, 
That He, the uncreated Light, 

May guide us as we go. 

Mediceval Hymn. 



The Lord shall be thine everlasting light. 



Grief is a tattered tent, 

Where through God's light doth shine. 
Who glances up, at every rent 

Shall catch a ray divine. 

Lucy Larcom. 



The worst evils are those that never arrive. 



September 17. 



" There is a good time coming, boys;" 
And many a one has passed; 
For each has had his own good time, 
And will have to the last. 
Then, do thy work, while lingers youth 
With freshness on its brow, 
Still mindful of life's greatest truth, 
The best of times is now. 

Mrs. L. C. Whiton. 



Joy is our duty, glory, health, 

The sunshine of the soul. 

Young. 



Our content is our best having. 

Shakespeare. 



September 18. 



The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the 
dancer's in respect of this, that it should stand ready 
and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unex- 
pected. 



Antoninus. 



The secret of happiness is, never to allow your energies 

to stagnate. 

Adam Clark. 



The sunshine of life is made up of very little beams that 
are bright all the time. To give up something, when giving 
up will prevent unhappiness ; to yield, when persisting will 
chafe and fret others ; to go a little around rather than come 
against another ; to take an ill look or a cross word quietly 
rather than resent or return it, — these are the ways in which 
clouds and storms are kept off, and a pleasant and steady 
sunshine secured. 



September 19. 



Once more the liberal year laughs out 

O'er richer stores than gems or gold : 
Once more with harvest-song and shout 

Is Nature's bloodless triumph told. 
Our common mother rests and sings, 

Like Ruth, among her garnered sheaves : 
Her lap is full of goodly things, 

Her brow is bright with autumn leaves. 
O favors every year made new ! 

O gifts with rain and sunshine sent ! 
The bounty overruns our due, 

The fulness shames our discontent. 
We shut our eyes, the- flowers bloom on; 

We murmur, but the corn-ears fill; 
We choose the shadow; but the sun, 

That casts it, shines behind us still. 

Whittier* 



September 20. 



THE FALLEN PINE-CONE. 

I lift thee thus, thou brown and rugged cone, 

Well poised and high, 
Between the flowering grasses and the sky; 

And, as sea-voices dwell 
In the fine chambers of the ocean-shell, 

So Fancy's ear 
Within thy numberless, dim complexities 

Hath seemed ofttimes to hear 
The imprisoned spirits of all winds that blow, — 
Winds of late autumn that lamenting moan 
Across the wild sea-surges' ebb and flow; 
Storm-winds of winter mellowed to a sigh, 
Long-drawn and plaintive ; or — how lingeringly ! - 
Soft echoes of the spring-tide's jocund breeze, 
Blent with the summer south wind, murmuring low. 

Paul H. Hayne. 



September 21. 



THE TREE. 

I love thee when thy swelling buds appear, 
And one by one their tender leaves unfold, 
As if they knew that warmer suns were near, 
Nor longer sought to hide from winter's cold; 
And, when with darker growth thy leaves are seen 
To veil from view the early robin's nest, 
I love to lie beneath thy waving screen, 
With limbs by summer's heat and toil opprest; 
And when the autumn's winds have stripped thee bare, 
And round thee lies the smooth, untrodden snow, 
When naught is thine that made thee once so fair, 
I love to watch thy shadowy form below, 
And through thy leafless arms to look above 
On stars that brighter beam when most we need their love. 

Jones Very. 



September 22. 



NEW EVERY MORNING. 

Every day is a fresh beginning, 

Every morn is the world made new. 
You who are weary of sorrow and sinning, 

Here is a beautiful hope for you, — 

A hope for me and a hope for you. 

All the past things are past and over, 

The tasks are done, and the tears are shed. 

Yesterday's errors let yesterday cover : 

Yesterday's wounds, which smarted and bled, 

Are healed with the healing which night has shed. 

Yesterday now is a part of forever, 

Bound up in a sheaf which God holds tight, 

With glad days and sad days and bad days, which never 
Shall visit us more with their bloom and their blight, 
Their fulness of sunshine, or sorrowful night. 

Let them go, since we cannot relive them, 

Cannot undo, and cannot atone ; 
God in his mercy receive, forgive them : 

Only the new days are our own ; 

To-day is ours, and to-day alone. 

Susan Coolidge. 



September 23. 



BEST. 

And yet thou canst not know, 
And yet thou canst not see : 
Wisdom and signs are slow 

In poor humanity. 
If thou couldst trust, poor soul ! 
In Him who rules the whole, 

Thou wouldst find peace and rest. 
Wisdom and sight are well, but trust is best. 

Adelaide A, Procter, 



All are not taken ! there are left behind 
Living beloveds, tender looks to bring, 
And make the daylight still a happy thing, 

And tender voices, to make soft the wind. 

E. B. Browning, 



September 24. 



THE PRINCE. 

September waves his golden-rod 

Along the lanes and hollows, 
And saunters round the sunny fields 

A-playing with the swallows. 

The corn has listened for his step; 

The maples blush to greet him; 
And gay, coquetting Sumach dons 

Her velvet cloak to meet him. 

Come to the hearth, O merry Prince ! 

With flaming knot and ember : 
For all your tricks of frosty eves, 

We love your ways, September ! 

Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. 



September 25. 



SEPTEMBER, 1815. 

While not a leaf seems faded, while the fields, 

With ripening harvests prodigally fair, 

In brightest sunshine bask, this nipping air, 

Sent from some distant clime where Winter wields 

His icy cimeter, a foretaste yields 

Of bitter change, and bids the flowers beware, 

And whispers to the silent birds, "Prepare 

Against the threatening foe your trustiest shields." 

For me, who, under kindlier laws, belong 

To Nature's tuneful choir, this rustling dry, 

Through the green leaves, and yon crystalline sky, 

Announce a season potent to renew, 

'Mid frost and snow, the instinctive joys of song, 

And nobler cares than listless summer knew. 

William Wordsworth. 



September 26. 



There is a large class of people who deem the busi- 
ness of life far too weighty and momentous to be made 
light of; who would leave merriment to children, and 
laughter to idiots ; and who hold that a joke would be as 
much out of place on their lips as on a gravestone or in 
a ledger. Wit and wisdom being sisters, they are afraid 
of being indicted for bigamy were they to wed them 

both ! 

Archdeacon Hare, 



Put not your trust in money, but put your money in 

trust. 

Holmes. 



Thou art in the end what thou art. Put on wigs with 
millions of curls, set thy foot upon ell-high rocks, thou 
abidest ever — what thou art. 

Goethe. 



September 27. 



'Tis more brave 
To live than to die. 

Owen Meredith. 



If Poverty is the mother of crimes, want of sense is 

the father. 

De la Bruyere, 



Dogmatism is puppyism come to its full growth. 

Douglas Jerrold. 



[Queen] Mary had a way of interrupting tattle about 
elopements, duels, and play debts, by asking the tattlers, 
very quietly yet significantly, whether they had ever read 
her favorite sermon, Dr. Tillotson's, on Evil Speaking. 

Lord Macau lay. 



September 28. 



There is infinite talk of the dissipated illusions of youth, 
the paling of bright young dreams. Life, it is said, turns 
out to be different from what it was pictured. The rosy- 
hued morning fades away into the gray and livid evening, 
the black and ghastly night. I do not believe this is the 
general experience. It surely should not be — it need not 
be. I have found things a great deal better than I ex- 
pected. 



Atlantic Monthly ', i86j. 



I ask you to look out for the sunlight the Lord sends 

into your days. 

Hope Campbell. 



Those who live in the Lord never see each other for 

the last time. 

German Motto. 



September 29. 



Jack Frost came down last night. 
He slid to the earth on a starbeam, keen and sparkling and 

bright. 
He sought in the grass for the crickets with delicate, icy 

spear, 
So sharp and fine and fatal, and he stabbed them far and 

near. 
Only a few stout fellows, thawed by the morning sun, 
Chirrup a mournful echo of by-gone frolic and fun. 

Celia Thaxter. 



To be impatient at the death of a person concerning 
whom it was certain he must die, is to mourn because 
thy friend was not born an angel. 

Jeremy Taylor. 



September 30. 



WHEN MY SHIP COMES IN. 

For summer and winter are one to me, 

And the day is bright, be it storm or shine; 
For far away, o'er a sunny sea, 

Sails a treasure-vessel, and all is mine. 
I see the ripples that fall away, 

As she cleaves the azure waves before; 
And nearer, nearer, day by day, 

Draws the happy hour when she comes to shore. 

"But what if she never comes ?" you say, 

"If you never the honor, the treasure, gain?" 
It has made me happier day by day, 

It has eased full many an aching pain, 
It has kept the spirit from envy free, 

Has dulled the ear to the world's rude din. 
Oh ! best of blessings it's been to me, 

To look for the hour when my ship comes in. 

Edward S. Rand, 



October 1. 



OCTOBER. 

Ay, thou art welcome, Heaven's delicious breath, 
When woods begin to wear the crimson leaf, 
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, 

And the year smiles as it draws near its death. 

Wind of the sunny South, oh ! still delay 
In the gay woods and in the golden air, 
Like to a good old age released from care, 

Journeying, in long serenity, away. 

In such a bright, late quiet, would that I 

Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks, 
And, dearer yet, the sunshine of kind looks, 

And music of kind voices ever nigh, 
And, when my last sand twinkled in the glass, 
Pass silently from men, as thou dost pass. 

William C. Bryant. 



October 2. 



Two persons took trouble in vain, and used fruitless 
endeavors, — he who acquired wealth without enjoying it, 
and he who taught wisdom but did not practise it. How 
much soever you may study science, when you do not act 
wisely you are ignorant. The beast whom they load with 
books is not profoundly learned and wise : what knoweth 
his empty skull whether he carrieth firewood or books? 

Sadu 



Sorrow itself is not so hard to bear as the thought of 
sorrow coming. Airy ghosts that work no harm do terrify 
us more than men in steel with bloody purposes. 

T. B. Aldrich. 



It is a part of my religion not to hurt any man's feelings. 

W. D. Howard. 



October 3. 



Spring is the inspiration, fall the expiration. Both sea- 
sons have their equinoxes, both their filmy, hazy air, their 
ruddy forest tints, their cold rains, their drenching fogs, 
their mystic moons; both have the same solar light and 
warmth, the same rays of the sun ; yet, after all, how dif- 
ferent the feelings which they inspire ! One is the morn- 
ing, the other the evening : one is youth, the other is age. 

John Burroughs, 

O happy day, returned once more, 
With golden plenty still replete 1 

As though she never gave before, 
Earth pours her treasures at our feet. 

More rich than Autumn's robe of leaves 
Should be the garments of our praise, 

And ampler than her ample sheaves 
The charities that crown our days. 

Harriet M. Kimball, 



October 4. 



God's finger- touch is on the hills : 

The leaves beneath it gleam and glow, 

Till the strange splendor overfills 

Their trembling life, and lays them low. 

So ardent souls, by life divine 
Enkindled, light our gloomy day, 

A little while before us shine, 

Then, spent with glory, pass away. 



There is only one stimulant that never fails, and yet 
never intoxicates, — Duty. Duty puts a blue sky over 
every man, — up in his heart, maybe, — into which the 
skylark, happiness, always goes singing. 

G. D. Prentice. 



October 5. 



Though a gem be worn on the feet, and glass on the 
head, yet glass is glass, and a gem a gem. 



Hindu. 



Grief is always conceited. It always thinks its case 
peculiar and unmatched. 

Beecher. 



Smile not at the legend as vain, that once in holy hands 
a worthless stone became a heap of silver. Let thy alche- 
mist be contentment, and stone or ore shall be equal to 

thee. 

Persian. 



All acts performed under a false guise are paths lead- 
ing to death. 

Hindu. 



October 6, 



Eve was the first woman who gathered leaves during 
the fall. 



Build a little fence of trust 

Around to-day : 
Fill the space with loving work, 

And therein stay. 
Peer not through the sheltering bars, 

At to-morrow : 
God will help thee bear what comes 

Of joy or sorrow. 



Mrs. M. F. Butts. 



When Eve upon the first of men 

The apple pressed with specious cant, 

Oh, what a thousand pities then 
That Adam was not Adamant ! 

Thomas Hood. 



October 7. 



May we look among the band of ministering spirits for 
our own departed ones ? Whom would God be more likely 
to send us? Have we in heaven a friend who knew us 
to the heart's core, — a friend to whom we have unfolded 
our soul in its secret recesses, to whom we have confessed 
our weaknesses and deplored our griefs? If we are to 
have a ministering spirit, who better adapted? Have we 
not memories which correspond to such a belief ? . . . 

Many a one, we are confident, can remember such 
things; and whence come they? Why do the children of 
the pious mother, whose grave has grown green and smooth 
with years, seem often to walk through perils and dangers 
fearful and imminent as the crossing Mohammed's fiery 
gulf on the edge of a drawn sword, yet walk unhurt ? Ah ! 
could we see that attendant form, that face where the angel 
conceals not the mother, our question would be answered 

Mrs. H. B. Stowe. 



October 8* 



THE TRUE WIFE. 

Oftentimes I have seen a tall ship glide by against the 
tide as if drawn by some invisible bowline, with a hundred 
strong arms pulling it. Her sails were unfilled, her stream- 
ers were drooping, she had neither side-wheel nor stern- 
wheel ; still she moved on stately, in serene triumph, as 
with her own life. But I knew, that on the other side of 
the ship, hidden beneath the great bulk that swam so majes- 
tically, there was a little toilsome steam-tug, with a heart of 
fire and arms of iron, that was tugging it bravely on ; and 
I knew, if the little steam-tug untwined her arm, and left 
the ship, it would wallow and roll about, and drift hither 
and thither, and go off with the refluent tide, no man knows 
whither. And so I have known more than one genius, high- 
docked, full-freighted, idle-sailed, gay-pennoned, but that 
for the bare, toiling arms, and brave, warm-beating heart of 
the faithful little wife, that nestles close to him, so that no 
wind or wave could part them, would have gone down with 
the stream, and have been heard of no more. 

O. W. Holmes. 



October 9. 



Would you not think that a splendid sunset had fallen 
down in fragments on the isle called Beautiful, and set it 
all a-blaze? The woods are on fire, yet they burn not; 
Beauty subdues the flame ; and there, as in a many-tinted 
tabernacle, has Color pitched his royal residence, and reigns 
in glory beyond that of any Oriental king. 

Christopher North. 

Strength is promised according to your day, but not 
according to your morrow. 



Cardinal Newman says, " It is almost a definition of a 
gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain." If 
the cardinal is correct, and can prove his statement, it is 
pretty rough on the dentists. We are sorry for those excel- 
lent men, but that definition lets them clear out. 

Burdett. 



October 10. 



There's many a trouble 

Would break like a bubble, 
And into the waters of Lethe depart, 

Did we not rehearse it, 

And tenderly nurse it, 
And give it a permanent place in the heart. 

There's many a sorrow 

Would vanish to-morrow, 
Were we but willing to furnish the wings : 

So sadly intruding, 

And quietly brooding, 
It hatches all sorts of horrible things. 

Tins ley's Magazine, 



A wide-spreading, hopeful disposition is your only true 
umbrella in this vale of tears. 

T. B. Aldrich. 



, 



For myself I made an excuse for poor Anna, knowing 
she supports upon her head the worry-pole. I dare say 
people do not know generally what this infliction is ; 
although they themselves probably bear one always about 
with them, sprouting out of their brains. 

An Art Student in Munich. 



I do not wonder at the superstition of the ancient 
Magians, who, in the morning of the world, went up to 
the hill-tops of Central Asia, and, ignorant of the true 
God, adored the most glorious work of his hand. But I 
am filled with amazement, when I am told, that in this 
enlightened age, and in the heart of the Christian world, 
there are persons who can witness this daily manifestation 
of the power and wisdom of the Creator, and yet say 
in their hearts, "There is no God." 

Edward Everett. 



October 12. 



Sculptors of life are we, as we stand, 

With our souls uncarved before us, 
Waiting the hour when at God's command, 

Our life-dream passes o'er us. 
If we carve it yet on the yielding stone, 

With many a sharp incision, 
Its heavenly beauty shall be our own, 

Our lives, — that angel vision. 

Bishop Doane. 



There is* a beautiful spirit breathing now 
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees, 
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes, 
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods. 

Longfellow. 



October 13. 



AUTUMN SONG. 

Red leaf, gold leaf, 

Flutter down the wind : 
Life is brief, oh ! life is brief, 
But Mother Earth is kind; 
From her dear bosom ye shall spring 
To new blossoming. 

The red leaf, the gold leaf, 
They have had their way; 
Love is long if life be brief, — 
Life is but a day ; 
And Love from Grief and Death shall spring 
To new blossoming. 

Ellen Mackay Hutchinson. 



October 14. 



"And there shall be no night there; and they need no 
candle, neither light of the sun." 



Religion is a cheerful thing : so far from being always 

at cuffs with good-humor, that it is inseparably united 

to it. 

Marquis of Halifax. 



Is Christ in us? be ours the glorious dower, 

To show the Saviour shining in our face, 
And, through our eyes forth-putting his sweet power, 

To help the weak and wayward with his grace : 

Oh ! let not sin in us those windows dim, 

Through which the world might catch some glimpse of 

him. 

R. Wilton. 



October 15. 



My heart glows with hope for the welfare of man ; 

I pray for my fellows, and help when I can; 
I see through the distance of ages to be, 
The many grown wiser, made happy and free, 

When Jones, interrupting, says, " Man is a knave, 

And, if not a tyrant, a fool or a slave." 

I answer, "There's kind human flesh on my bones: 
Get out of my sunshine, cadaverous Jones." 

Charles Mackay. 



We rise by things that are 'neath our feet, 
By what we have mastered of good and gain, 
By the pride deposed and passion slain, 

And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet. 

J. G. Holland. 



October 16. 



COURTESY. 

William Wirt's letter to his daughter on the "small, 
sweet courtesies of life," contains a passage from which a 
deal of happiness might be learned : " I want to tell you 
a secret. The way to make yourself pleasing to others, is 
to show that you care for them. The world is like the 
miller at Mansfield, 'who cared for nobody, no, not he, 
because nobody cared for him.' And the whole world 
will serve you so if you give them the same cause. Let 
every one, therefore, see that you do care for them, by 
showing them what Sterne so happily calls 'the small, 
sweet courtesies/ in which there is no parade; whose 
voice is to still, to ease; and which manifest themselves 
by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of 
attention, giving others the preference in every little 
enjoyment at the table, in the field, walking, sitting, or 
standing." 



October 17. 



There are no times in life when opportunity, the 
chance to be and do, gathers so richly about the soul as 
when it has to suffer. Then every thing depends on 
whether the man turns to the lower or the higher helps. 
If he resorts to mere expedients and tricks, the opportu- 
nity is lost. He comes out no richer nor greater; nay, 
he comes out harder, poorer, smaller, for his pain. But, 
if he turns to God, the hour of suffering is the turning- 
hour of his life. 

Phillips Brooks. 

What is mind? No matter. 
What is matter? Never mind. 
What is soul? It is immaterial. 



Many people find their only happiness in forcing them- 
selves to be unhappy. 



October 18. 



October glows on every cheek, 

October shines in every eye; 
While up the hill and down the dale 

Her crimson banners fly. 

Elaine Goodale. 



Cheerfulness in large doses is the best medicine one 

can take along in his out-door tramps. 

J. T. Fields. 



Next to the rhinoceros, there is nothing in the world 
armed like a woman. And she knows it. 

Jerrold. 



The October day is a dream, bright and beautiful as 
the rainbow, and as brief and fugitive. 

W. H. Gibson. 



October 19. 



Of all the bores whom man in his folly hesitates to 

hang, and Heaven in its mysterious wisdom suffers to 

propagate their species, the most insufferable is the teller 

of "good stories." 

De Quincey. 



An opportunity is like a pin in the sweepings : you 

catch sight of it just as it flies away from you, and gets 

buried again. 

Mrs. Whitney. 



Count each affliction, whether light or grave, 
God's messenger sent down to thee. 

Aubrey de Vere. 



October 20. 



We often fail by searching far and wide 

For what lies close at hand. To serve our turn 

We ask fair wind and favorable tide : 

From the dead Danish sculptor let us learn 

To make occasion not to be denied. 

Against the sheer, precipitous mountain side, 
Thorwaldsen carved his lion of Lucerne. 



There is many a thing which the world calls disap- 
pointment, but there is no such word in the dictionary 
of faith. What to others are disappointments are to 
believers intimations of the will of God. 

Newton. 



Most of our comforts grow up between crosses. 



October 21. 



We can never go back, but there is not a point from 
which we may not go upward. 



Man without religion is the creature of circumstances; 
but religion is above all circumstances, and will lift him 
up above them. 

Archdeacon Hare. 



We can never be too careful 

What the seed our hands shall sow : 
Love from love is sure to ripen, 

Hate from hate is sure to grow. 
Seed of good or ill we scatter 

Heedlessly along our way, 
But a glad or grievous fruitage 

Waits us at the harvest day. 



October 22. 



Dear reader, in a world made by a loving Father, we 
are all of us children of good-fortune, if we only have wit 
enough to find it out as we stroll along. 

E. E. Hale. 



SCATTER BLESSINGS ROUND. 

Sure they of many blessings 

Should scatter many blessings round, 
As laden boughs in autumn fling 

Their ripe fruit to the ground. 



If God made the world, you need not fear that he can't 
take care of so small a part as yourself. It is better, there- 
fore, to trust than to grumble. 



But it may be, in a diviner air 
Transfigured and made pure, 
The harvest that we deemed as wholly lost, 
Waits perfect and mature; 
And the faint heart, that now defeated grieves, 
May yet stand smiling 'mid abundant sheaves. 

Mary L. Ritter. 



A sacred burden is this life ye bear: 
Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, 
Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly. 
Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, 
But onward, upward, till the goal ye win. 

Frances Ke?nble, 



October 24. 



In this the art of living lies : 

To want no more than may suffice, 

And make that little do. 

Cotton. 



The gods give nothing really good and beautiful without 

labor and diligence. 

Xenophon. 



Many persons sigh for death when it seems far off; but 
the inclination vanishes when the boat upsets, or the loco- 
motive runs off the track, or the measles set in. 

T. W. Higginson. 



There never comes a shadow 
That the sunshine hath not made. 



October 25. 



It takes a touch of adversity to show whether a man is 
a man at all, just as it needs the touch of frost to bring 
out the glories of the trees. Even on a dark day in Octo- 
ber, how royally the woods flame out ! Under what glorious 
banners they march to meet the winter ! What unmatched 
splendors, rich as sunset skies, tender as the rainbow, shine 
out over the whole earth ! Those splendors are the treas- 
ures that the trees were silently laying up when the sum- 
mer's sun flooded them all day long ; and shall a man in 
his time of prosperity lay up no store of sunshine in his 
inner self, whereby, when darker days come on, he shall 
be luminous with courage and good cheer ? 



One of those October days, when to breathe the air is 
like drinking wine, and every touch of the wind against 
one's face is a caress; you have a sense of companion- 
ship; it is a day that loves you. 

Sarah Jewett, 



October 26. 



There is one sin which, it seems to me, is everywhere and 
by everybody underestimated, tolerated with undue toler- 
ance, and quite too much overlooked in our valuations of 
character. It is the sin of fretting. 

He who frets is never the one who mends. And when 
the fretter is one who is beloved, whose nearness of relation 
to us makes his fretting at the weather seem almost like a 
personal reproach to us, then the misery of it becomes 
indeed insupportable. Most men call fretting a minor 
fault, — a foible, and not a vice. 

There is no vice, except drunkenness, which can so 
utterly destroy the peace, the happiness, of a home. 

H. H. 



It takes a heroine to be economical. 

Miss Muloch. 



October 27. 



The hills are bright with maples yet; 

But down the level land 
The beech-leaves rustle in the wind, 

As dry and brown as sand. 
The clouds in bars of rusty red 

Along the hill-tops glow; 

And in the still, sharp air the frost 

Is like a dream of snow. 

Alice Cary, 

Fire ! fire ! upon the maple-bough 

The red flames of the frost. 
Fire ! fire ! by burning woodbine, see, 

The cottage-roof is crossed. 
The hills are hid by smoky haze; 
Look, how the roadside sumachs blaze ; 
And on the withered leaves below, 
The fallen leaves like bonfires glow. 

Marian Douglas. 



October 28. 



MY CREED. 

I hold that Christian grace abounds 
Where charity is seen; that when 

We climb to heaven, 'tis on the rounds 
Of love to men. 

'Tis not the wide phylactery, 

Nor stubborn fast, nor stated prayers, 
That make us saints : we judge the tree 

By what it bears. 

And when a man can live apart 
From works, on theologic trust, 

I know the blood about his heart 
Is dry as dust. 



Alice Cary. 



October 29. 



A good heart is the sun and the moon, — or, rather, 
the sun; for it shines bright, and never changes. 

Shakespeare. 



" Lawks ! " exclaimed Mrs. Partington, " what monsters 
these master-builders must be ! I am told some on 'em 
have as many as a hundred hands ! " 



"Tommy," said a mother to her seven-year-old boy, "you 
must not interrupt me when I am talking with ladies. You 
must wait till we stop, and then you can talk." 

"But you never stop," retorted the boy. 



October 30. 



No sorrow upon the landscape weighs, 
No grief for the vanished summer days, 
But a sense of peaceful and calm repose, 
Like that which age in its autumn knows. 

The spring-time longings are past and gone, 
The passions of summer no longer are known, 
The harvest is gathered; and Autumn stands 
Serenely thoughtful, with folded hands. 

O glorious autumn ! thus serene, 

Thus living, and loving all that has been ! 

Thus calm and contented let me be 

When the autumn of age shall come to me. 

Anon. 



October 31. 



Bright yellow, red, and orange, 

The leaves come down in hosts; 
The trees are Indian princes, 

But soon they'll turn to ghosts; 
The leathery pears and apples 

Hang russet on the bough: 
It's autumn, autumn, autumn late; 

Twill soon be winter now. 

William Allingham. 



In the clime of the spirit alone, Love ! 

Life's seasons are darksome or bright, 
Encompassed with joy, like the sunshine, 

Or shadowed with grief, like the night ! 

Paul H, Hayne. 



November 1. 



No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthy ease, 

No comfortable feel in any member, 
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, 
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, 
November ! 



Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a 
distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. 

Carlyle. 



It is well! 
God's ways are always right; 
And love is o'er them all, 
Though far above our sight. 



November 2. 



Wrung with barren grief, November lies, 
An angry tumult raging in her brain, 

Catching her broken breath in shuddering sighs, 
With clenched hands, tossing in convulsive pain. 

Elaine Goodale. 



There are nettles everywhere, 
But smooth green grasses are more common still : 
The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud. 

Mrs. Browning. 



Enjoy the present hour, be thankful for the past, 
And neither fear nor wish the approaches of the last 

Cowley. 



Why not adopt from Japan, with her pottery and her 
more trivial quaintnesses, that poetic simplicity which 
makes yearly holidays of the " flower- vie wing " ? It is 
easy, amid the hills, to mark the season with flowers. 
Nay, we need but lend our eyes, and they themselves 
will gently lead us on. Unbidden they come. Fiom the 
arbutus, awakening from her winter-sleeping buds, purer 
by contrast with the rusted evergreen of her leaves ; the 
apple-blossoms, nature's bounty, though man's possession; 
the mountain laurel, flushing the very highest hill-tops ; 
the gay field-flowers, daisies and buttercups, and nodding 
spikes of airy purple grasses ; the lilies, of the field and 
of the wood, — on to the innumerable clouds of the 
asters, and the utter lavishness of golden-rod, — there is 
scarcely a pause. For these are but a few : their name 
is legion; and scarcely can one choose between them, 
save that we love the best the one that is here. 

When the fringed gentian lifts her eye to heaven in 
still, secluded spots amid the woods, a summer will have 
come and gone. 

D. H. R. Goodale. 



November 4. 



" What shall I do to be forever known ? " 

Thy duty ever. 
"This did full many who yet sleep unknown." 

Oh, never, never ! 
Think'st thou perchance that they remain unknown 

Whom thou know'st not ? 
By angel trumps in heaven their praise is blown; 

Divine their lot. 

" What shall I do to gain eternal life ? 

Discharge aright 
The simple dues with which each day is rife ? " 

Yea, with thy might. 
Ere perfect scheme of action thou devise 

\ Will life be fled ; 

While he who ever acts as conscience cries, 
Shall live, though dead. 

Schiller* 



November 5. 



And should the twilight darken into night, 

And sorrow grow to anguish, be thou strong; 

Thou art in God, and nothing can go wrong 
Which a fresh life-pulse cannot set aright : 
That thou dost know the darkness, proves the light. 

Weep if thou wilt, but weep not all too long; 

Or weep and work, for work will lead to song. 



And do not fear to hope. 



Each time we smell the autumn's dying scent, 
We know the primrose time will come again : 
Not more we hope, nor less would soothe our pain. 

Be bounteous in thy faith, for not misspent 

Is confidence unto the Father lent : 

Thy need is sown and rooted for his rain. 

Work on. One day, beyond all thoughts of praise, 
A sunny joy will crown thee with its rays, — 
No other than thy need, thy recompense. 

George Macdonald. 



November 6. 



TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN. 

Thou waitest late, and com'st alone, 
When woods are bare, and birds are flown, 
And frosts and shortening days portend 
The aged year is near its end. 

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 
Look through its fringes to the sky, 
Blue, blue as if that sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall. 

I would that thus, when I shall see 
The hour of death draw near to me, 
Hope, blossoming within my heart, 
May look to heaven as I depart. 

Bryant. 



November 7. 



THE FEAST-TIME OF THE YEAR. 

This is the feast-time of the year, 

When hearts grow warmer, and home more dear; 

When autumn's crimson torch expires, 

To flash again in winter fires; 

And they who tracked October's flight, 

In charmed circle sit and praise 

The goodly logs' triumphant blaze. 

Harriet McEwen Kimball. 



We have had a slight frost, the first tender touch of Win- 
ter's jewelled finger : a premonition, — no more. How 
kindly the old dame moves in the country — how orderly ! 
How cleverly she lays every thing to sleep, and then folds 
over all her delicate drapery ! 

F. S. Cozzens. 



November 8. 



'Tis the Sabbath-rest 
Of Nature ere she yields to Winter's power. 

Street. 



Better to weave in the web of life 

A bright and golden filling, 

And to do God's will with a ready heart, 

And hands that are ready and willing, 

Than to snap the delicate, minute threads 

Of our curious lives asunder, 

And then blame Heaven for the tangled ends, 

And sit and grieve and wonder. 



You may know mock modesty as you do mock turtle, • 
from its being the product of a calf's head. 



November 9. 



Why, man ! do you vituperate the world ? The world 
is most beautiful, framed by the best and most perfect rea- 
son; though to you indeed it may be unclean and evil, 
because you are unclean and evil in a good world. 

Marsilius Fianus. 



"W , do you know why you are like a donkey?" — 

"Like a donkey?" echoed W , opening his eyes wide: 

" No, I don't." — " Do you give it up ? " — " I do." — " Be- 
cause your better half is stubbornness herself." — " That's not 
bad. Ha, ha ! I'll give that to my wife when I get home." 

"Mrs. W ," he asked, as he sat down to supper, "do 

you know why I am like a donkey?" He waited a mo- 
ment, expecting his wife to give it up. But she didn't. 
She looked at him somewhat commiseratingly, as she an- 
swered, " I suppose because you were born so." 



I'm all hunk on savin' nickels; 
But a little taste o' fun 
Now and then don't hurt a feller, 
Helps to make the old thing run; 
Makes the days more flush o' sunshine; 
Makes yer work go off more gay : 
Ef you're goin' to grind an organ, 
Have a monkey, — that's my way. 

D. L. ProudfiU 



I am not earth-born, though I here delay. 

Hope's child, I summon infmiter powers, 
And laugh to see the mild and sunny day 

Smile on the shrunk and thin autumnal hours: 
I laugh, for hope hath happy place with me; 
If my bark sinks, 'tis to another sea. 

William Ellery Channing. 



November 11. 



What if a river should say to a rill, 

" If you weren't too lazy, you'd turn a mill : 

Study my method, and try to be 

A rushing, roaring river like me ! " 

What if a goose should teach a wren, 
Or an eagle try to follow a hen ! 
What if the monkeys should all agree 
That there ought to be uniformity ! 

What if a man should say to another, 
"Differ with me, and you're not my brother: 
I have the truth as oracles tell; 
Go with me, or — you'll go to hell!" 

M. F. Butts. 



CHRYSANTHEMUMS. 

Ye come, the heart to gladden with your smile, — 
A gleam of brightness ere the winter near, — 
Chasing our sadness with your magic will. 
Happy their lot, like you, who soothe and cheer, 
And life's November brighten and beguile. 



The year grows old : summer's wild crown of roses 
Has fallen and faded in the woodland ways. 

On all the earth a tranquil light reposes 
Through the still, dreamy days. 

And from the garden-lawn comes, soft and clear, 
The robin's warble from the leafless spray, — 

The low, sweet Angelus of the dying year, 
Passing in light away. 



November 13. 



TAKE HEART. 

All day the stormy wind has blown 
From off the dark and rainy sea ; 

No bird has past the window flown; 

The only song has been the moan 
The wind made in the willow-tree. 

This is the Summer's burial time : 

She died when dropped the earliest leaves; 
And cold upon her rosy prime 
Fell down the Autumn's frosty rime, — 

Yet I am not as one that grieves. 

7?. T. K 



Labor, the symbol of man's punishment; 
Labor, the secret of man's happiness. 

James Montgomery, 



November 14. 



Tis ever wrong to say a good man dies. 

Calliniachus. 



And, as she looked around, she saw how Death, the con- 
soler, 

Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it for- 
ever. 

Longfellow. 



O thou by winds of grief o'erblown, 
Beside some golden summer's bier, 
Take heart ! Thy birds are only flown, 
Thy blossoms sleeping, tearful sown, 
To greet thee in the immortal year ! 

Edna Dean Proctor. 



November 15. 



An ounce of cheerfulness is worth a pound of sadness, 

to serve God with. 

Fuller. 



The habit of looking on the best side of every event is 

worth more than a thousand pounds a year. 

Johnson. 



He who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the 

loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten 

its cause. 

H. W. Beecher. 



Tis sweet, as year by year we lose 
Friends out of sight, in faith to muse 
How grows in Paradise our store. 



Keble. 



November 16. 



Those who are afflicted, and do not afflict in return, 
who suffer every thing for the love of God, and bear their 
burdens with a cheerful heart, shall be, according to the 
promise, invincible as the rising sun in his might. 

The Talmud. 



Death's but a path that must be trod, 
If man would ever pass to God. 

ParnelL 



The tree 

Sucks kindlier nurture from a soil enriched 

By its own fallen leaves; and man is made, 

In heart and spirit, from deciduous hopes, 

And things that seem to perish. 

Henry Taylor. 



November 17. 



Hannah More says, " In my judgment, one of the best 
proofs that sorrow has had any right effect upon the mind, 
is, that it has not incapacitated you from business, — your 
business being your duty." 



AGAINST IMPATIENCE. 

Be not impatient, O Soul ! 

Thou movest on to thy goal. 

Be not full of care : 

In the universe thou hast thy share. 

Be not afraid, but trust : 

Thou wilt suffer nothing unjust. 

Anon. 



In tracing the shade, I shall find out the sun. 

Owen Meredith. 



November 18. 



HIDDEN IN LIGHT. 

When first the sun dispels the cloudy night, 
The glad hills catch the radiance from afar, 
And smile for joy. We say, "How fair they are, 
Tree, rock, and heather-bloom so clear and bright ! " 
But when the sun draws near in westering night, 
Infolding all in one transcendent blaze 
Of sunset glow, we trace them not, but gaze 
And wonder at the glorious, holy light. 
Come nearer, Sun of righteousness ! that we, 
Whose swift, short hours of day so swiftly run, 
So overflowed with love and light may be, 
Lost in the glory of the nearing sun, 
That not our light, but thine, may brightly shine, 
New praise to thee through our poor lives be won ! 

Frances Ridley HavergaL 



November 19. 



Boughs are daily rifled 
By the gusty thieves, 

And the book of nature 
Getteth short of leaves. 

Round the tops of houses, 
Swallows, as they flit, 

Give, like yearly tenants, 
Notices to quit. 

So November endeth, 

Cold, and most perverse; 

But the month that follows, 
Sure will pinch us worse. 



T. Hood. 



Be lighted from within by unseen Guest, 

Send out warm rays of love to all distrest, 

And lure them, by your shining, into rest. 

K. H. J. 



November 20. 



Forenoon and afternoon and night; 
Forenoon and afternoon and night; 
Forenoon and afternoon, — the empty rhyme 
Repeats itself. No more ? Yes : this is life. 
Make this forenoon sublime, this afternoon 
A psalm, this night a prayer, and life 
Is conquered, and thy crown is won. 



So brief the time to smile, 
Why darken we the air 

With frowns and tears, the while 
We nurse despair? 

Stand in the sunshine sweet, 
And treasure every ray, 

Nor seek with stubborn feet 
The darksome way. 



Celt a Thaxter. 



November 21. 



A THANKSGIVING. 

Lord, for the erring thought 
Not into evil wrought; 
Lord, for the wicked will 
Betrayed and baffled still; 
For the heart from itself kept, — 
Our thanksgiving accept. 

For ignorant hopes that were 
Broken to our blind prayer; 
For pain, death, sorrow, sent 
Unto our chastisement ; 
For all loss of seeming good, — 
Quicken our gratitude. 

William Dean Howells. 



More welcome than voluptuous gales 
This keen, crisp air as conscience clear : 

November breathes no flattering tales, — 
The plain truth-teller of the year. 

Who wins her heart, and he alone, 
Knows she has sweetness all her own. 

This is the month of sunrise skies, 
Intense with molten mist and flame. 

Out of the purple deeps arise 

Colors no painter yet could name. 

Gold lilies and the cardinal flower 
Were pale against this gorgeous hour. 

Lucy Larcom. 



The sun, — God's crest upon his azure shield, the heavens. 

Bailey. 



November 23. 



Yet will I try to keep the heart with diligence, nor ever 
fear that the sun is gone out because I shiver in the cold 
and dark. 

Margaret Fuller, 



Upwards steals the life of man, 
As the sunshine from the wall, 
From the wall into the sky, 
From the roof along the spire. 
Ah ! the souls of those that die, 
Are but sunbeams lifted higher. 

Longfellow, 



Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the 
kingdom of their Father. 

Matthew xiii. 43. 



It is a little thing to speak a phrase 

Of common comfort, which by daily use 

Has almost lost its sense; yet on the ear 

Of him who thought to die unmourned, 'twill fall 

Like choicest music. 

Talfourd. 



It was only a glad " good-morning," 
As she passed along the way; 

But it spread the morning's glory 
Over the livelong day. 



Carlotta Perry. 



On this earth there are many roads to heaven, and 

each traveller supposes his own to be the best. But 

they must all unite in one road at last. It is only 

Omniscience can decide. 

Eliza Leslie, 



November 25. 



Old, — we are growing old ; 
Going on through a beautiful road, 
Finding earth a more blessed abode, 
Nobler work by our hands to be wrought, 
Freer paths for our hope and our thought. 

Because of the beauty the years unfold, 

We are cheerfully growing old. 

Old, — we are growing old. 
Going up where the sunshine is clear, 
Watching grander horizons appear 
Out of clouds that enveloped our youth, 
Standing firm on the mountains of truth. 

Because of the glory the years unfold, 

We are joyfully growing old. 

Lucy Larcom. 



November 26. 



SONG. 

O spirit of the summer-time ! 

Bring back the roses to the dells, 
The swallow from her distant clime, 

The honey-bee from drowsy cells. 
Bring back the friendship of the sun ; 

The gilded evenings calm and late, 
When merry children homeward run, 

And peeping stars bid lovers wait. 
Bring back the singing and the scent 

Of meadow-lands at dewy prime ; 
Oh, bring again my heart's content, 

The spirit of the summer-time ! 

W. A. 



Heaven never helps the men who will not act. 

Sophocles, 



Suns may fall 

Or flash, dear heart ! I speak, and call 

Your soul unto its fate. 

Tread bravely down life's evening slope, 

Before the night comes,- — do not grope. 

Forever shines some small, sweet hope; 

And God is not too late. 

E. S. Phelps. 



The most manifest sign of wisdom is continued cheer- 
fulness. 

Montaigne. 



If there is a virtue in the world at which we should 

always aim, it is cheerfulness. 

Bulwer Lytton. 



November 28. 



HOPE. 

Oh ! hope's not a simple, a meaningless name, 
Within the fool's brains generated : # 

The heart ever burns in loud notes to proclaim 
For purposes grand we're created. 

Whenever the innermost voice aught repeats, 

The soul, in its longings, that voice never cheats. 

Schiller. 



Why shouldst thou feel with sorrow 
About to-morrow, 

My heart? 
One watches all with care most true : 
Doubt not that He will give thee, too, 

Thy part. 



Paul Fleming. 



He comes, — he comes, — the Frost Spirit comes ! let us 

meet him as we may, 
And turn with the light of the parlor-fire his evil power 

away; 
And gather closer the circle round, when that firelight 

dances high, 
And laugh at the shriek of the baffled Fiend as his 

sounding wing goes by ! 

Whittier. 



Soul, be but inly bright, 
All outer things must smile, must catch 
The strong, transcendent light. 

T. H. Gill 



"The light shall shine upon thy ways. ,; 



November SO. 



THE LAST DAY OF AUTUMN. 

Like a spirit glorified, 
The angel of the year departs, lays down 
His robes once green in spring, 
Or bright with summer's blue; 

And having done his mission on the earth, 
Filling ten thousand vales with golden com, 
Orchards with rosy fruit, 
And scattering flowers around, 

He lingers for a moment in the west, 

With the declining sun sheds over all 

A pleasant farewell smile, 

And so returns to God. 

From the German. 



December 1. 



With his ice and snow and rime, 

Let bleak Winter sternly come : 

There is not a sunnier clime 

Than the love-lit winter home. 

Alaric A. Watts. 



There is a charm in the sudden and total disappear- 
ance even of the grassy green. All "the old familiar 
faces " of Nature are for a while out of sight and out of 
mind. That white silence shed by heaven over earth 
carries with it, far and wide, the pure peace of another 
region, — almost another life. We are glad to feel our 
whole being complexioned by the passionless repose. 



Though Winter howleth at the gate, 

In our hearts 'tis summer still. 

Efies Sargent. 



December 2. 



You ask to conquer in the strife : 

Take, then, your chosen part. 
I'd rather fold within my life 

The sunshine of the heart. 

I'd rather know how thus to win 

A balm from every pain; 
Thus, even from the shade of sin, 

Some purer strength to gain; 
To live in hope, to trust in right, 

To smile when shadows start, 
To walk through darkness as through light, 

With sunshine in the heart. 

Mary E. Blake. 



Men should not think too much of themselves, and 
yet a man should always be careful not to forget himself. 



December 3. 



I have always noticed, that, if you want people to laugh, 
you had better make a bad old joke than a good new one : 
for, in the first place, every one knows the point of the 
former ; and, in the second, people laugh out of pure com- 
passion for the perpetrator, because by experience they know 
how painful is the position of one, who, after having delivered 
himself of a Joe Miller, is disappointed of the expected 

titter. 

a Angelina GushingtonP 



This man might have been a Counsellor of State till 

he spoke. 

Ben Jonson. 



What would have become of you if it had pleased 
Providence to make the weather unchangeable. 

Sydney Smith. 



December 4. 



WINTER. 

Sad soul, dear heart, and why repine? 

The melancholy tale is plain : 
The leaves of spring, the summer flowers, 

Have bloomed and died again. 

Sad 1 soul, dear heart, no more repine. 

The tale is beautiful and plain : 
Surely as winter taketh all, 

The spring shall bring again. 

T. B. Read. 



A fresh mind keeps the body fresh. Take in the 
ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday. As to the 
morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes 
to-day. 

Bulwer Lytton. 



December 5. 



"What she could" — not what she could not do — 

not what she thought might be done — not what she 

would like to do — not what she would do if she had 

more time — not what somebody else thought she ought 

to do — but "what she could." 

W. A. Shipment. 



Ah ! more than martyr's aureole, 
And more than hero's heart of fire, 

We need the humble strength of soul 
Which daily toils and ills require. 

Sweet Patience ! grant us, if you may, 

An added grace for every day. 

Elizabeth Akers Allen. 



We ask advice, but we mean approbation. 

Colton : Lacon. 



December 6. 



THE GOLDEN CALENDAR. 

Count not the years that hoarding Time has told, 
Save by the starry memories in their train ; 
Not by the vacant moons that wax and wane, 
Not all the seasons' changing robes infold : 
Look on the life whose record is unrolled ! 

Bid thought, word, action, breathe, burn, strive again. 

O. W. Holmes. 



You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheer- 
ful people. Why not make that earnest effort to confer 
that pleasure on others? You will find half the battle is 
gained if you never allow yourself to say any thing gloomy. 

Mrs. L. M. Child. 



You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some 

with you. 

Joubert. 



December 7. 



Dear old songs forever new; 

Some true love, and laughter too ; 
Pleasant wit, and harmless fun, 
And a dance when day is done; 

Music, friends so true and tried, 

Whispered love by home fireside; 
Mirth at all times, — all together 
Make sweet May of winter weather. 

Alfred Do?nett, 



In winter a fire is better than a muscat rose. 

Persian. 



The fire is winter's fruit. 

Arabian. 



December 8, 



Employment iz the grate boon ov life : a man with 
nothing to do iz not haff so interesting a sight as a 
ripening turnip. 

Hunting for happiness iz like hunting for hens* eggs 
under the barn : haff the time they are addled after yu 
hav found them. 

Josh Billings, 



Have a purpose. A worthy purpose will speedily free the 

mind and spirit of the mumps and measles, dyspepsia and 

languor.' 

P. S. Boyd. 



It has been said, and* very truly, "Reputation is what 
men think of us ; character is what God knows of us." 



December 9. 



PEACE. 

If sin be in the heart, 
The fairest sky is foul, and sad the summer weather, 
The eye no longer sees the lambs at play together, 
The dull ear cannot hear the birds that sing so sweetly, 
And all the joy of God's good earth is gone completely, 

If sin be in the heart. 

If peace be in the heart, 
The wildest winter storm is full of solemn beauty, 
The midnight lightning-flash but shows the path of duty, 
Each living creature tells some new and joyous story, 
The very trees and stones all catch a ray of glory, 

If peace be in the heart. 

Charles Francis Richardson. 



Conceit may puff a man up, but never prop him up. 

Ruskin. 



December lO. 



It is a great and a noble thing to cover the blemishes 
and to excuse the failings of a friend; to draw a curtain 
before his stains, and to display his perfections; to bury 
his weaknesses in silence, but to proclaim his virtues 
upon the housetop. 



South, 



This is the law of benefits between men : the one 
ought to forget at once what he has given, and the other 
ought never to forget what he has received. 

Seneca. 



"Some people," says Alphonse Karr, "are always find- 
ing fault with Nature for putting thorns on roses : I 
always thank her for having put roses on thorns." 



December 11. 



So each shall mourn, in life's advance, 

Dear hopes, dear friends, untimely killed, - 
Shall grieve for many a forfeit chance, 

And longing passion unfulfilled. 
Amen, whatever fate be sent. 

Pray God the heart may kindly glow, 
Although the head with cares be bent, 

And whitened with the winter snow. 

Thackeray, 



A contented spirit is the sweetness of existence. 

Dickens, 



He is richly endowed who is cheaply diverted. 

Italian Proverb, 



December 12. 



The well-informed philosopher 
Rejoices with a wholesome fear, 

And hopes in spite of pain : 
If Winter bellow from the north, 
Soon the sweet Spring comes dancing forth, 

And Nature laughs again. 



If hinderances obstruct thy way, 
Thy magnanimity display, 

And let thy strength be seen; 
But, oh ! if fortune fill thy sail 
With more than a propitious gale, 

Take half thy canvas in. 



Cowper. 



Hope rules a land forever green. 



Wordsworth. 



December 13. 



No wonder that old age to-day draws his chair from 
the fireside to the threshold, as if ready to go, wondering 
why improvement and refinement should progress so 
rapidly as to deprive the world of its sweetest and purest 
pleasures. Yes : the philosopher's stone is buried in the 
ashes of our fathers' firesides ; and yet we endure the 
heated breath of Stygian furnaces and blank - looking 
stoves, that have taken the place of genial hearthstones. 
"Is the world," says Hawthorne, "so very bright that we 
can afford to choke up such a domestic fountain of 
gladsomeness, and sit down by its darkened source, with- 
out being conscious of a gloom?" 



We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a 

picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of 

a good light. 

Emerson. 



December 14, 



All God's angels come to us disguised. 
Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, 
One after other lift their frowning masks ; 
And we behold the seraph's face beneath, 
All radiant with the glory and the calm, 
Of having looked upon the front of God. " 

Lowell. 



Stars lying in God's hand, 

We know ye were not planned 

Merely to light men on their midnight way. 

Shine on, ye fiery stars ! 

It may be through your bars 

We shall pass upwards to eternal day. 

Ha,7nilton Aidd. 



December 15. 



Oh ! what concerns it him, whose way 
Lies upward to the immortal dead, 

That a few hairs are turning gray, 
Or one more year of life has fled? 

Swift years ! but teach me how to bear, 
To feel and act with strength and skill, 

To reason wisely, nobly dare, 

And speed your courses as ye will. 

Andrews Norton, 



Oh ! dear old year, I wronged a Father's kindness ; 

I would not trust him with my load of care; 
I stumbled on in weariness and blindness; 

And, lo ! he blessed me with an answered prayer, 

Sarah Doudney. 



December 16. 



Find us a better answer to the questionings of our 
spirits than Christ has furnished ! Show us a better 
ideal of manhood than he has given ! Bring us a better 
testimony to the life beyond the grave than he has 
borne ! Ah ! for four thousand years the world tried in 
vain to return to God; and, now that he has come him- 
self to be the way, we will not give him up for any 

negation. 

William M. Taylor. 



I would rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition, 
than in air rarefied to nothing by the air-pump of un- 
belief; in which the panting breast expires, vainly and 

convulsively gasping for breath. 

Richter. 



The noblest mind the best contentment has. 

Spenser. 



December 17. 



In December ring 

Every day the chimes; 
Loud the gleemen sing 

In the streets their merry rhymes. 
Let us sing by the fire 
Ever higher, 
Sing them till the night expire. 

Longfellow. 



"Always pay as you go," said an old man to his 
nephew. "But, uncle, suppose I have nothing to pay 
with?" — "Then, don't go." 



Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, 

die for it; any thing but — live for it. 

Cotton. 



December 18. 



THE SUN-DIAL. 

Only the sunny hours 

Are numbered here, — 
No winter-time that lowers, 

No twilight drear; 
But from a golden sky, 

When sunbeams fall, 
Though the bright moments fly, 

They're counted all. 

No Past the glad heart cowers, 

No memories dark : 
Only the sunny hours, 

The dial mark. 

E. C. Stedman. 



Whatsoever is brought upon thee, take cheerfully. 



December 19. 



WINTER. 

A wrinkled, crabbed man they picture thee, 

Old Winter, with a rugged beard as gray 

As the long moss upon the apple-tree; 

Blue-lipt, an ice-drop at thy sharp blue nose, 

Close muffled up, and on thy dreary way 

Plodding alone through sleet and drifting snows. 

They should have drawn thee by the high-heapt hearth, 

Old Winter, seated in thy great armed chair, 

Watching the children at their Christmas mirth, 

Or circled by them as thy lips declare 

Some merry jest, or tale of murder dire, 

Or troubled spirit that disturbs the night, 

Pausing at times to rouse the mouldering fire, 

Or taste the old October brown and bright. 

Southey. 



December 20. 



If one should give me a dish of sand, and tell me there 
were particles of iron in it, I might look with my eyes for 
them, and search for them with my clumsy fingers, and be 
unable to find them ; but let me take a magnet and sweep 
it, and how it would draw to itself the most invisible parti- 
cles by the power of attraction ! The unthankful heart, like 
my finger in the sand, discovers no mercies; but let the 
thankful heart sweep through the day, and, as the magnet 
finds the iron, so it will find in every hour some heavenly 
blessings : only, the iron in God's sand is gold. 

O. W. Holmes. 



A man may be thought clever while he is seeking 

for wisdom ; but, if he imagines he has found it, he is a 

fool. 

Persian. 



December 21. 



Wild was the day: the wintry sea 

Moaned sadly on New-England's strand, 

When first the thoughtful and the free, 
Our fathers, trod the desert land. 

Bryant 



The Pilgrim spirit has not fled : 

It walks in noon's broad light; 
And it watches the bed of the glorious dead, 

With their holy stars by night; 
It watches the bed of the brave who have bled, 

And shall guard this ice-bound shore, 
Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay, 

Shall foam and freeze no more. 

John Piepront. 



December 22. 



FOREFATHER'S DAY. 

Find me the men on earth who care 

Enough for faith or creed to-day 
To seek a barren wilderness 
For simple liberty to pray. 

Despise their narrow creed who will ! 

Pity their poverty, who dare. 
Their lives knew joys, their lives wore crowns, 

We do not know, we cannot wear. 

And if so be that it is saved, 

Our poor Republic, stained and bruised, 
'Twill be because we lay again 

Their corner-stones which we refused. 

Helen Hunt Jackson. 



December 23. 



DECEMBER. 

Come, tonic blasts ! 
Arouse my courage, stir my thought, 
Give nerve and spring, that as I ought 
I give my strength to what is wrought, 

While duty lasts. 

Glow, arctic light ! 
And let my heart with burnished steel, 
That bright magnetic flame reveal 
Which kindles purpose, faith, and zeal 

For truth and right. 

Shine, winter skies ! 
That when each brave day's work is done, 
I wait in peace, from sun to sun, 
To meet unshamed, through victory won, 

Your starry eyes. 

Louisa P. Hopkins, 



December 24. 



The things we do at Christmas are touched with a 
certain grain of extravagance, as beautiful in some of its 
aspects as the extravagance of Nature in June. 

Still, I think it is not hard to see how we may spare, 
even at the Christmas-tide, and yet do more and better 
than if we spend. 

If a man spends the money he ought to save to pay 
his debts, when he knows very well he can only pay his 
debts by saving, he may give what he buys right and 
le# with an open hand, and it will be to his own shame. 

Robert Collyer. 



Presents endear absents. 

Charles Lamb. 



Fear not the future, weep not for the past. 

Shelley. 



December 25. 



MERRY CHRISTMAS! 

It is the Xmas time : 

And up and down, 'twixt heaven and earth, 

In glorious grief and solemn mirth, 
The shining angels climb; 

And unto every thing 
That lives and moves, for heaven, on earth, 

The shining angels sing. 

Mrs, Craik. 



Without the door let sorrow lie; 
And, if for cold it hap to die, 
We'll bury't in a Xmas pie, 
And evermore be merry. 

George Wither. 



December 26. 



A Christmas day, to be perfect, should be clear and 
cold, with holly branches in berry, a blazing fire, a 
dinner with mince-pies, and games and forfeits in the 
evening. You cannot have it in perfection, if you are 
very fine and fashionable. A Christmas evening should, 
if possible, finish with music. It carries off the excite- 
ment without abruptness, and sheds a repose over the 
conclusion of enjoyment. 

Leigh Hunt. 



Through every web of life the dark threads run. 
Oh ! why and whither ? God knows all. 
I only know that he is good, 
And that whatever may befall, 
Or here or there, must be the best that could. 

Whittier. 



December 27. 



If a sunset were as rare as a comet, the people would all 
be out upon the hill-tops, — astronomers with their telescopes, 
poets with their pens, artists with their brushes, — to capture 
what they could of it, and give it immortality. Or, if only 
once in a year the eastern skies held sunrise, we should be 
out of bed betimes, that morning, to watch the gold and 
crimson pageant passing up the sky. But, because these 
glories face us every day, we are color-blind to them. 

W. C. Gannett, 



Make the best of every thing ; 
Think the best of everybody ; 
Hope the best for yourself: 
Do as I have done, — persevere. 

George Stephenson, 



December 28. 



The year was old that day. The patient year had 
lived through the reproaches and misuses of its slan- 
derers, and faithfully performed its work. 

Spring, summer, autumn, winter, it had labored through 
the destined round, and now laid down its weary head 
to die. Shut out from hope, high impulse, active 
happiness itself, but messenger of many joys to others, 
it made appeal, in its decline, to have its toiling days 
and patient hours remembered, and to die in peace. 

Dickens* 



Think that day lost whose low descending sun 
Views from thy hand no noble action done. 

BobarL 



The Year will write, " Fruits gleaned, and rest is near. 
I am grown old : my work is almost done." 



December 29. 



Death is the portal and portico of " our Father's 
house.' ' As we stand under the porch, the archway over 
our head projects a shadow. We are for a moment out 
of life's sunshine. But the next, the door opens; and 
better than the blaze of earthly sun is ours. The dark- 
ness is past, and the true light shineth ! 



EVERY-DAY RELIGION. 

Every-day religion is the foundation of thoroughness, 
which is another word for truthfulness or honesty. Work- 
men that slight their work, whether they make shirts for 
a living, or sermons, build houses or ships, raise flocks or 
raise families, will be some day or other found out. We 
want clothes that will not rip, vessels that will not leak, 
and bridges that will not break down. So we want 
characters that will stand temptation, and not snap 
asunder under the sudden pressures of life. 

New-York Evangelist 



December 30. 



Say not, the struggle naught availeth, 
The labor and the wounds are vain, 

The enemy faints not, nor faileth, 

And as things have been they remain* 

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars : 
It may be, in yon smoke concealed, 

Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers, 
And, but for you, possess the field. 

And not by eastern windows only, 

When daylight comes, comes in the light : 

In front the sun climbs slow, now slowly; 
But westward, look ! the land is bright. 

Arthur Hugh C lough. 



Serve the Lord with gladness. 



December 31. 



FAREWELL TO THE OLD YEAR. 

Stay yet, my friends, a moment stay, 

Stay, for the good old year, 
So long companion of our way, 

Shakes hands, and leaves us here. 
Even while we sing he smiles his last, 

And leaves our sphere behind. 
The good old year is with the past: 

Oh, be the new as kind ! 



Bryant 



I stand to-night on the threshold 

Of a strange, mysterious door, 
That silently opes from the year just gone, 

To the one that lies before. 

F. J. D. 



MOVABLE FEASTS 



SPECIAL DAYS. 



JtTirst <Stmtra2 in ILent 

Thou loving Maker of mankind, 

Before thy throne we pray and weep : 

Oh, strengthen us'with grace divine 
Duly this sacred Lent to keep ! 

Breviary, 



Sackcloth is a girdle good : 

Oh, bind it round thee still ! 
Fasting, it is angel's food ; 

And Jesus loved the night-air chill : 
Yet think not prayer and fast were given 

To make one step 'twixt earth and heaven. 



first JKonUag in ILent 

A TRUE LENT. 

Is it to fast an houre, 
Or rag'd to go, 
Or show 
A downcast look, and sowre ? 

It is to fast from strife, 
From old debate, 
And hate, 
To circumcise thy life. 

To shew a heart grief-rent; 
To starve thy sin, 
Not bin; 
And that's to keep thy Lent. 

Robert Herrick. 



passion Simtrag* 

Saviour, when in dust to thee 
Low we bend the adoring knee; 
When, repentant, to the skies 
Scarce we lift our weeping eyes, — 
Oh, by all thy pain and woe 
Suffered once for man below, 
Bending from thy throne on high, 
Hear our solemn litany I 

Sir Robert Grant 



Palm gutttrag* 

"And a very great multitude spread their garments in 
the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and 
strawed them in the way." 



The Sunday garment glittering gay, 

The Sunday-heart will steal away. 

Then haste thee, ere the fond glance stray, 

Thy precious robes unfold, 
And cast before thy Saviour's feet : 
Him spare not with thy best to greet, 
Nor dread the dust of Sion's sheet, 
Tis jewels all and gold. 



ffiootr jFritragu 

j He is despised and rejected of men." 



Is it not strange, the darkest hour 

That ever dawned on sinful earth 
Should touch the heart with softer power 

For comfort than an angel's mirth? 
That to the cross the mourner's eye should turn 

Sooner than where the stars of Christmas burn? 

Keble. 



<Saturtrag before lEaster* 

Sing, children, sing ! 

The lilies white you bring 

In the joyous Easter morning for hope are blossoming; 

And, as the earth her shroud of snow from off her breast 
doth fling, 

So may we cast our fetters off in God's eternal spring, 

So may we find release at last from sorrow and from 
pain, 

So may we find our childhood's calm, delicious dawn 
again. 

Sweet are your eyes, O little ones, that look with smil- 
ing grace, 

Without a shade of doubt or fear, into the Future's face I 

Sing, sing in happy chorus, with joyful voices tell 

That death is life, and God is good, and all things shall 
be well; 

That bitter days shall cease 

In warmth and light and peace ; 

That winter yields to spring: 

Sing, little children, sing ! 

Celia Thaxter. 



faster cSuntrag. 


How did the Lord keep Easter? With his own. 


Back to meet Mary where she grieved alone, 


With face and mien all tenderly the same, 


Unto the very sepulchre he came. 



And I do think, as he came back to her, 
The many mansions may be all astir 
With tender steps that hasten in the way, 
Seeking their own upon this Easter day. 

Parting the veil that hideth them about, 
I think they do come softly, wistful out 
From homes of heaven, that only seem so far, 
And walk in gardens where the new tombs are. 



lEaster JHontfag* 

And perched the glittering, icy boughs among, 
One little bird was pouring out his song, 
An Easter carol full of faith and cheer, 
Under the leaden sky so sad and drear. 

Dear little songster, braver thou than we ! 
Surely our clouded hearts are shamed by thee : 
So easy 'tis to sing when skies are fair, 
And the spring gladness waketh in the air. 

But still to keep sweet music in the heart 
When wintry storms bid brightest hopes depart, 
When skies are dark and springtime waiteth long, 
This is the true, the perfect, Easter song. 

G. H. D. 



8Hf}ftgtttiftag* 

. Pause, then, a moment, and think what Whitsunday was 
the first Whitsunday ! 

And what that first Whitsunday was to all the world, 
one certain day becomes to any man, — the day when 
the Holy Spirit comes to him. God enters into him, and 
he sees all things with God's vision. Truths which were 
dead spring into life, and are as real to him as they are 
to God. 

Oh, in this world of shallow believers, and weary, dreary 
workers, how we need that Holy Spirit ! 

Phillips Brooks, 



&f}anftsgtbmg Bag* 

Oh, the glorious Thanksgivings 

Of the days that are no more ! 
How, with each recurring season, 

Wakes their mem'ry o'er and o'er, 
When the hearts of men were simpler, 

And the needs of life were less, 
And its mercies were not reckoned 

By the measure of excess* 

Heaven send the glad Thanksgiving 

Of that older, simpler time ! 
Tarry with us, not in fancy, 

Not in retrospective rhyme ; 
But in true and living earnest 

May the spirit of that day, 
Artless, plain, and unpretending, 

Once again resume its sway ! 

E. A. Stnuller. 



-A-1 r^k0^^yK^ $ *>j\A>i* 



?A& s. 



